Water main break floods streets
A major water main break near the access to the Jacques‑Cartier bridge plunged the morning commute into chaos for many. Photos show an outrageous geyser.
Adding at noon from radio news: power has been cut off in the area for safety, and there’s a boil water advisory in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve and Montreal East for the moment. Papineau metro station is being protected with sandbags.
JaneyB 09:04 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Oh good lord! Now that’s a twist for the commute.
Ian 09:14 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Lots more pics & video from TVA here – pretty insane!
Joey 10:18 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
The transition from ‘things at present are generally OK’ to ‘at any given moment we are dealing with one or more floods, fires, ice storms or heat waves’ is happening much more quickly than I think a lot of climate-change-aware people anticipated.
CE 10:35 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I don’t see how a water main break has much to do with climate change.
Kate 11:38 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
The water mains are getting a workout as the ground freezes and thaws more often. I don’t know if it’s the only issue but it has to be a factor.
Joey 12:12 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
More flooding = more strain on aging infrastructure = more ‘small’ problems (basic water main break) & more likelihood of ‘major’ problems (i.e., today’s mess).
In addition, even small floods can have devastating consequences that, ultimately, will make more and more homes uninsurable.
Moreover, even if today’s episode is the result of poor infrastructure, negligence, criminality or a mere accident (remember when the McGill reservoir parts of downtown because a construction worker hit a pipe?), the system is less resilient because of climate change. So while the cause of the break may not be climate change related, the impact will likely be exacerbated by climate change.
walkerp 12:21 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
And just think about how much impact a record-breaking downpour of 175 mm of water has on the water system.
The climate change-aware people that I know are not surprised at all. Scientists have been saying it’s going to be exponential for decades and now we are starting to see it. It is really, really scary. The only good thing is that may be the damage that is coming will finally start to wake people up to make the real change we need to at least mitigate the damage we have already done.
CE 13:05 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
All these arguments make sense although I think a water main break is a very small consequence of climate change and likely could have happened even if there we weren’t experiencing the changes we are now. I feel like when every little disaster that can be tangibly blamed on climate change is said to be a result of it, it kind of cheapens the argument for many people.
@Walkerp, I remember reading a lot from the more alarmist side of the climate change discussion around 2005-10 and the big thing they talked about was the cascading effect of climate change where one change would affect other changes and so on which would snowball into an unpredictable monster. A lot of those arguments were sidelined or thought to be problems we wouldn’t see until the end of the century (thus giving us time to fix them). A lot of what I remember reading then is coming true now, and it’s just getting started. Unfortunately, I don’t think people are going to wake up and I think we’re too far into it to turn the ship around.
Ian 13:18 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
“I feel like when every little disaster that can be tangibly blamed on climate change is said to be a result of it, it kind of cheapens the argument for many people.” 100%, this. It’s also a convenient cop-out.
I suspect that we will find out that the major water main break has to do with mechanical failure as a result of incompetence, much like why our potholes come back each year while the city blames our freeze-thaw cycle. Toronto’s climate isn’t substantially different from ours, please show me the major water main breaks there – or even regular water main breaks anywhere near the regularity that Montreal with its decades of poor maintenance enjoys. Ottawa has WORSE winters than us, why don’t they have potholes like we do?
Perplexing. /s
Montreal is constantly under construction precisely to prevent this kind of infrastructure failure due to a lack of regular maintenance, and the cause of this lack of regular maintenance can be directly attributed to greedy, lazy, buck-passing politicians at every level for decades before the “roadwork nightmare” was made necessary. The only reason we are getting our bridges rebuilt is because they were literally in danger of collapse.. that’s not because of the climate, either.
Joey 13:54 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@CE it feels like a majority of climate change news consists of “scientists assumed X wouldn’t happen for decades and when it did happen it would be gradual, possibly intense; turns out it’s happening now and it’s worse than expected and it is causing Y, which scientists hadn’t anticipated.”
Kevin 16:44 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
If something goes wrong in Montreal/Quebec, the first things to suspect are corruption and incompetence. See Big O, Blvd. De Souvenir, Viger Tunnel…
walkerp 17:55 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I’m genuinely quite baffled by your perception of how scientists have been talking about climate change. Maybe I am misreading you, but for most of last ten years, my reading has been “we are reaching a tipping point beyond which the impacts of the change in the average temperature will start to become exponential.” There was no consensus on exactly when that tipping point would be but that when it came, we would start seeing an increase in extreme weather events that would get worse and worse.
In any case, it appears we have passed the tipping point so what we perceived in the past is probably not worth arguing about.
Also, stupid to argue climate change vs infrastructure. We need to fight on both fronts: radically changing our behaviour to stop the warming for the long term and building up our infrastructure to mitigate the damage that is coming.
And yes, Quebec corruption and inefficiency is most likely a significant factor in this water main burst, but please let’s not act like Toronto and Ottawa are bastions of infrastructural excellence.
Ian 20:31 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Oh they’re not, but the infra is better than ours on any given day. And when it does fail, they certainly don’t make up excuses like our glorious leaders.
It’s really not stupid to argue cliamte change vs infrastructure, they are two separate things that can and should be dealt with in different ways. Saying “my hands are tied” is such a classic Quebec move that it barely merits mention, let alone excuse.
Chris 15:22 on 2024-08-18 Permalink
>The only good thing is that may be the damage that is coming will finally start to wake people up…
Thanks for the good laugh walkerp! I needed one today.