So as I was browsing the Calgary subreddit last night, there was a post about how the neighborhoods of Bowness, Montgomery, and Parkdale (Parkdale being the neighborhood at the bottom of our big hill) had either no water or very little water pressure in their taps. Turns out a water main broke on 16th Ave. and crews were having a hell of a time shutting the water off before finally getting the gushing to stop. After reading this post, I checked our water pressure and it seemed fine, but I decided to fill up the five or so water bottles I had lying around the house just in case.

Fast forward to this morning. I’d forgotten about the broken water main until mile 2 of my run, at which time I got an emergency alert message on my phone saying that the water main break was a critical one, Bowness was under boil water advisories, and that everyone was being advised to conserve water.

I didn’t know quite how bad things were by this point, but in another five minutes or so I hit the part of the river path that goes behind all the athletic fields in Montgomery. The path, the parking lot next to the path, and the road going through the athletic fields were all taped off.

So I had to switch my route around and run up Home St. to see if I could get around the blocked area. Turns out they had a whole section of 16th Ave. blocked off – where the water main break happened, of course – and were already trying to fix things. I was able to run my regular route through Bowness and read more about the main break once I got home.

Turns out it’s pretty serious.

Hopefully they can get it fixed within a week.

Edit: HAHA NOPE (see June 14th’s blog post)