Stop, Drop and Roll

02 July 2007 | Alameda Community | John Knox White

Try as I might, sometimes writing five separate posts a week is harder than it seems like it should be. And sometimes, the unplanned gets in the way. Last Thursday night is an example. I sat down around 11:00pm to quickly tap out Friday’s post, at this point I can’t even remember what it was going to be about, when Mrs. SD&R asked if I smelled something funny in the bedroom. I casually assumed that my beloved’s super-human olfactory skills would conclude with the realization that the dog needs a bath, however, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that there was raw sewage backing up into the bathroom that connects off the bedroom.

I of course panicked, plugged the pipes by standing on a board and when the first wave subsided (sadly there was more than one wave) called the cops (who else in the city answers the phone at 11:15pm? To my credit, I did not dial 9-1-1!) The incredibly helpful operator on the other end said she’d get someone to call me back….and she did! Within 5-minutes!

Pat from Public Works called me back and helped me, over the phone, figure out part of the problem and a temporary solution that would stop the immediate problem in the house, and within 30 minutes, Mike (also from Public Works) was in my front yard firing up a generator and roto-routing the sewer lateral (the blockage appeared, and eventually was found, to be on the city-side of the lateral). After 45-90 minutes of roto-routing and high pressure pumping, we called it a night, the lateral still completely blocked, but knowing that the problem would not cause more in-home trouble.

At 8:15am, another crew from the city was out trying to fix the problem, this included roto-routers, high pressure hoses, a large pumper truck with a really big hose, and finally around 2pm, a jack-hammer, backhoe and team of PW workers. It turns out the pipe had long ago broken and slowly, filled with sandy soil. At 4:15, we returned home to a new patch of blacktop and a working sewer lateral. The city employees were incredibly helpful, friendly and probably most important, empathetic.

City staff take a lot of beatings over time. I wanted to say that, my family and I were, and continue to be, incredibly thankful for their amazing response at a time when it would have been easy to say “we’ll try and get someone out to you in the morning” or “You’re on the list and we’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

The irony in the situation is that our block’s 100-year old sewer is set to be replaced in two weeks.