Wichitans inconvenienced by water issue but grateful this crisis would be short-lived
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Wichita boil water advisory
A major Wichita water main break on Oct. 7, 2021, led the Kansas Department of Heath and Environment to place the city and others that purchase water from its system under a boil water advisory.
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Around Wichita on Friday, people who weren’t boiling water or looking for water to buy were swapping stories about the strange predicament the whole city was facing together.
But it’s hardly the first strange predicament the city has faced together of late, they noted, and at least this one would be short-lived.
Unlike, say, a global pandemic.
“You just boil your water,” said Kristin Reynolds, a hairdresser from Derby who didn’t let the situation slow her down on Friday. “It’s not that hard to do.”
The boil order caused minor inconveniences for people like Reynolds, who said she had to boil five big pots of water so her dogs had safe water to drink. She also spent part of her day fielding calls from clients wondering if it was safe to wash hair and if they should still come in for their appointments at Shear Mania.
For other people, the water crisis caused major interruptions or irritations, as they struggled to find childcare when school was canceled or sat unmoving in a coffee shop drive-through before realizing the shop was closed.
Kim Myers, who’s been remodeling a house in Mulvane, finally got her fancy new dishwasher installed on Thursday and was excited to run the first load.
That’s when she heard from her daughter-in-law that the Wichita area was under a water advisory that also included her new house, which is on rural water.
She wasn’t sure if it would be safe to use dishes that had been cleaned in the dishwasher and just decided to abandon the project.
“I just said, ‘Forget it,” she said. (The CDC says it’s safe to use dishes cleaned in a dishwasher if it reaches a final rinse temperature of at least 150 degrees or if it has a sanitizing cycle.)
The staff of the Women’s Fair, a three-day market that opened Friday at Century II, were worried for part of the week that the water situation was going to affect the fair’s ability to open. A separate water main break happened Wednesday near the southeast loading dock at Century II as vendors were trying to move in. One staffer described seeing water bubble up in the parking lot and then partially flood it.
The staff watched Wednesday as city crews dug a deep hole in the parking lot just behind the loading dock to fix a split pipe. Inside Century II, there was no water. Toilets wouldn’t flush, so port-a-potties were brought in. And the air conditioner, which uses water to operate, wasn’t working.
The water service returned Thursday, said Jenny Smith, who is one of the fair’s staff members, but then the city-wide water advisory was issued. She wasn’t sure how fair managers were going to keep the staff hydrated.
“I also wondered what was going to happen with concessions here,” she said.
Justin Light, another Women’s Fair staff member, was sent out to find bottled water on Thursday evening. He first went to Costco, where each member was allowed two pallets of water. People were calm, and things were orderly.
Then he stopped at the Walmart on East Kellogg and followed a crazed throng to the back of the store. When he got there, he witnessed two angry women in a tug-of-war over the last case of inexpensive water. He grabbed “three cases of the overpriced Fiji water” and headed quickly for the checkout.
Afterward, he passed the Central and Rock Dillons and the Sprouts Market across the street and saw a mess of cars, so he just kept driving.
“You could just tell that was not where you wanted to be,” he said.
Light ended up with enough bottled water to get the staff by, he said. By the time the Women’s Fair opened on Friday, the toilets were flushing, the air conditioner was working and the concession stand was open, though it wasn’t able to offer fountain drinks.
The ordeal, he said, gave him an unpleasant flashback to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and all the unnecessary hoarding.
“It kind of reminded me of the toilet paper incident of 2020,” he said.
This story was originally published October 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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