And Not a Drop to Drink

Friday night I was eating dinner at King Buffet. At some point I realized my fountain Diet Coke was being refilled with bottled Diet Pepsi, and the waitresses were struggling with bottles to keep all the patrons' thirsts quenched. I didn't really think much of it.

I left King's and went to Target to enjoy the fruits of my first payday at CofC (X-Files season sets are down to a reasonable $40 instead of the $110-$125 they used to be - I'm as Scully crazy as any mother has ever been but that is just frikkin' ridiculous).

I had to pee. The men's room was out of order. No good. But... this Target also has a back-up unisex restroom!

It was also closed.

"If I have to leave this store to go to the bathroom," I thought disgruntly, "I'm not coming back." I marched on to see if I could still leave by the mall entrance, even though it was 9:25 pm. I carefully dodged a growing crowd of employees and customers in the grocery section and ran for the mall doors.

The doors were locked. Scheiße!

I flagged down the rent-a-cop to make sure the mall was closed. It was. "And all the restrooms are out of order?"

"Yeah," he explained to my growing horror, "all over Charleston, as far as Goose Creek already! A main ruptured."

Gadzooks. That explained the irritables down in the grocery section. The problem could take days to fix! Natives were scrambling for bottled water. Urinary needs temporarily forgotten, I calmly joined them.

One 24 pack of Deer Park was enough for most of my household needs. I wasn't worried about me or Grendel not having water to drink, I was thinking about the bathroom.

Days! It could be days!

An army of assistant managers and young female cashiers were struggling to move carts of bottled water from the back while keeping the young male stockers from going apeshit. I don't know if it was the idea of being without water or the idea of being mobbed by customers, but one kid was turning over his box of frogs.

It is often said that any society is three meals away from collapse, and the situation at hand seemed to be a corollary of that old adage. Knowing this, I called my coworker Joey to warn her and her husband, and hurried home to wall myself in with Grendel. And pee.

A press conference was scheduled for 11 pm. Whenever there's a water problem, the explanation is always that "a main broke." In this case, the main broke. A section of the four foot diameter pipe going into the treatment plant for the tri-county area broke in three places. Further, the break was in a marsh so folks were scrambling for a way to get to it, as gawking yokels and local news crews (is that redundant?) slack-jawwed on.

I have not been impressed so far with any public services in Charleston. There is little planning to alleviate the rampant suburban growth spewing into all directions from downtown, the paltry bus system is just recovering from bankruptcy and pedestrians place their lives in danger when sidewalks abruptly end, leaving them stranded on the precipitous shoulders of overcrowded roads. The water folks, however, seem to know what they are doing.

The director was on by 11:05 pm. He told us that the system was designed with enough redundancy that despite the currently unfixable main line breakage, flow was being restored to most of the area as he spoke. The only problem was that there was not going to be normal pressure for a while, which could theoretically cause some water to not be 100% decontaminated. Folks were advised to boil water for the next 24 hours, until contamination tests came back.

So in the end, civilization was restored. I felt sorry for all the family restaurants and other businesses that lost customers on (apparently) one of the biggest Friday nights of the year, the eve of the Cooper River Bridge Run and Summerville's Azalea Festival.

But I'm thankful that tonight my biggest problems are deciding what mp3 player I'll buy soon and whether to watch "Die Hand Die Verletzt" or "Humbug" after the Miyazaki festival.