Water back on in Midtown Plaza

The two ladies danced as the water came sputtering on at 4 p.m. Monday.

"I get to go first," said Tina Whitesides of Nutrition Unlimited.

"Oh, the things you take for granted," said Shelly Porter, the health store's owner.

The employees at Nutrition Unlimited had been using bottled water to wash their hands and buckets of water in the toilet tank since the pipes for the strip mall at Midtown Plaza froze Wednesday.

Porter said she gave her employees an hour lunch break so they could go do what they had to do but Bobby Roberson, owner of Paradise Café, couldn't keep his restaurant open without water. He's had a "Closed. Gone to the Beach" surfboard sign in his window since Wednesday.

"They were saying hopefully we'd have water on tonight. I was also told that Friday," said Roberson on Monday.

Dennis Joseph of Scottsdale Plumbing had at least four men working out back of the mall since Friday to replace pipe.

"The old pipe was too high and froze," said Joseph. "Douglas County has a two foot minimum for pipe so it should have been deeper. Inspectors should have caught it."

Joseph said there was no way to thaw the original line that was made of a poly pipe material, so they had to make a trench the length of the building to install new pipe at the proper depth.

Several places around the Valley experienced frozen pipes during cold temperatures over the past two weeks, including Merrill Gardens and R&T Cleaners.

Merrill Gardens General Manager Jeri Shields said the assisted living center suffered some broken pipes but was able to work around the damage and retain all the residents.

The Genoa Community Church's furnace failed last week and pipes and fire sprinklers froze.

R-C Weather Watcher Julian Larrouy recorded a temperature of -13 degrees in Centerville on Jan. 13. Lows remained at 0 or below for four days over the Martin Luther King long weekend.