My neighbor has been digging up his yard for months to construct a culvert in his ditch. A couple of days ago he sheepishly showed up at my front door because he finally hit a pipe with his shovel and water was pouring out. He hit the main pipe that’s on the company side of our water meters, so he potentially had cut off water to my house and others.

We quickly determined that even though we had lower pressure, thankfully my house still had running water. He then called the water company’s emergency hotline and they… didn’t send anyone out.

Yesterday, he texted me to see if I could take a look and see if they’d sent anyone out yet, because he’d ended up in the hospital with a rapid heartbeat, probably due to a combination of overexertion and the stress of hitting the water line (and pre-existing heart problems). They had not. So he called them again, 3 times. Finally, they said they’d send someone out.

In the meantime, I’d left the house to run errands. Then I get a notification from the camera on the side of my house. Some guy from the water company walked up to where a hose/the main water shutoff is for my house. Since I couldn’t see what he did on camera, I assumed he was turning my water off while they completed the repair at the street.

Soon after that, I see that a whole crew has arrived, with a backhoe and several vehicles loaded with equipment. They appear to be fixing the leak. I check in on my camera later and see that there is water all over my driveway, and I hear loudly running water on my camera feed.

So I text several neighbors, because I won’t be home for a few hours, and I’m hoping that my house hasn’t sprung a leak or something. Finally, a neighbor of a neighbor walks down to my house and checks out the situation.

Turns out, the guy from the water company disconnected my hose from the faucet and had turned my faucet up full blast, so it was just spraying water at the foundation of my house, so much that it was spilling onto our driveway, which is fairly long. He just left it like that.

Great job, water company. What if I was out of town?

My neighbor is still in the hospital and I texted him today but haven’t heard back yet. I’m fairly worried. Hopefully I’ll hear from him soon.

Update: My neighbor just texted me, he’s alive and well!