A few days ago, the renowned Sunset Boulevard where scenic photographs and movie-worthy shots have been taken over the years, suddenly became what was more like the counterpart of North Carolina's Sunset Beach due a ruptured water line and an ensuing flood of great proportions.
Roughly a week after a main water pipeline burst and sent many parts flooded including areas in UCLA, the Department of Water and Power (DWP) is now considering bringing back a long discarded program that allowed them to perform controlled stress tests that would show them areas along the pipe network that are at risk of rupturing.
Jim McDaniel, the senior assistant of DWP, stressed that the said program for maintenance and testing problematic pipes had long been scrapped and mothballed. New methods of testing pipes have been utilized but he has been expressing concerns that this current method of knowing corroded and weak pipes may do more "false positive" feedback which may cause them to unnecessarily dig up even the good ones.
It was reported that the latest pipe burst caused about 20 million gallons of water to be scattered all over the immediate area, damaging real estate properties and more than 300 vehicles, and causing a sinkhole to form.
The city mayor announced last Monday that the flood was the result of poorly engineered pipes at their joints. These pipe joints were riveted, yet were heavily corroded internally and externally, causing the most weakened area give in to the internal pressure of the water flowing inside it. These pipes were dated to as early as the 1950's and were initially set to be replaced every 3 centuries.
Clearly, the DWP now realizes that the scheduled replacement scheme of main waterways may have to be reevaluated and have the detection done as early as possible to avoid similar mishaps in the immediate future.
