CHARLOTTE Local Charlotte News — People called 311, and according to Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, some residents even called 911 to report the water outage. But those really in the know found out on social media, which made no sense to others.
Water gushing at Remount Road, and plenty of people trying to find out what happened on Monday evening as a water main broke.
Tom Platt who lives in the south end called Mecklenburg County 311 but got no answer.
“I thought my phone was shut off.” Platt added.
Other people called more than once.
“I called 311 about 14 times and got a busy signal every single time,” said Hillary Pietrucci, assistant general manager at The Crunkleton. “Nothing on the website, there was no information, I had no idea.”
The staff at The Crunkleton got the answer from a business next door, and from a co-worker in Raleigh. Pietrucci closed the restaurant for the night and on Tuesday reopened under a boil water advisory.
“We’re basically offering guests a bottle of water in lieu of a glass of water,” says Pietrucci. “Of course, if they want more, we will have to offer that to them as well. We’re not able to use the soda gun because that is associated with water, at least until Thursday. With ice, we can’t use the ice because that could be contaminated.”
Charlotte Water gave an update on the situation, and one of the first questions, why did it take so long to inform customers of what was happening? Charlotte Water issued a tweet early Monday night, then silence until the boil water advisory, and a lot of work behind the scenes.
“One is to determine the size and the scope of who was impacted, the second was to look at the raw data to see if we actually had pressure low enough to be of concern,” said Angela Charles, director at Charlotte Water.
Many residents and businesses felt there could be more updates made.
“It would have been nice to have something on their website or something,” said Pietrucci.
“Little concerning knowing it’s a city service that you expect to have as a resource,” added Platt.
