Lowell City Council looks to address devastating Nov. 28 flood

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Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Julee Sok wipes her eyes as she and her husband, Phillip Luy, talk about the flooding of their house on Race Street. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. The 'good part' of the basement of City View Towers, viewed from the bottom of the basement steps. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Phillip Luy, of 34 Race St., shines his flashlight down the basement steps, with water not yet pumped out. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 30, 2022 - Lowell Humane Society Executive Director Crystal Arnott cuddles Leon, a domestic shorthair cat who is one of the pets evacuated from City View Towers due to the water main break that are being temporarily housed for their owners. Leon's owner originally adopted him from the Lowell Humane Society, and Arnott recognized him when he arrived. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 28, 2022 – A broken water main in the Acre neighborhood, flooded Moody, Aiken and Cabot streets and Father Morissette Boulevard Monday. (Courtesy Curtis Chanthaboun)

Nov. 28, 2022 – A broken water main in the Acre neighborhood flooded Moody, Aiken and Cabot streets and Father Morissette Boulevard Monday. (Courtesy Curtis Chanthaboun)

Nov. 30, 2022 - Lowell Humane Society Executive Director Crystal Arnott in the room where pets evacuated from City View Towers due to the water main break are being temporarily housed. They are currently taking care of seven cats and three birds for their owners. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 28, 2022 – A broken water main in the Acre neighborhood, flooded Moody, Aiken and Cabot streets and Father Morissette Boulevard Monday.(Courtesy Curtis Chanthaboun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Phillip Luy, of 34 Race St., shines his flashlight down the basement steps. His basement had not yet been pumped out. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Phillip Luy, of 34 Race St., describes how water came in through his front room (an enclosed porch) and over the sill into the first floor. He was home when the water main broke. His floor is still coated with mud. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Phillip Luy, of 34 Race St., describes how water came in through his front door. He was home when the water main broke. His floor is still coated with mud. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. ServiceMaster employee Jen (didn't want to use last name) leaves 30 Race St., where the basement was being pumped out. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. ServiceMaster technician Matt Defeo tightens a hose joint as he pumps water out of a home on Race Street. At rear is Lowell Housing Authority's City View Towers. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Race Street resident Phillip Luy describes how high the water came, as shown by the mud line on the siding. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Race Street resident Phillip Luy, right, points out his house to ServiceMaster technician Matt Defeo, who was pumping out the house at rear. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. The area on Father Morrissette Boulevard where the water main break occurred. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Race Street in Lowell is still covered in a coat of mud. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Tommy Yem, of 30 Race St., sits in his car which had stopped going into gear in the Senior Center parking lot, although the engine was running. The car had been in the flood. Looking on are Lowell Police Officer Tom Richardson and Amada Gregory, of Lowell, who had been volunteering at the Senior Center to help the residents who were evacuated from the flooded area, including Yem. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Sign at entrance to Senior Center, which was closed for regular business while it served as a shelter for evacuated residents of the flooded arear. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. City View Towers at 657 Merrimack St., from which residents were evacuated due to a lack of utilities after the basement flooded. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. City View Towers residents John Sheehy and Aida Torres leave City View Towers after picking up some belongings. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. City View Towers resident Stephen Hoyle waits for a ride back to the Senior Center after picking up some belongings, although he was thinking of just walking. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. A Department of Public Works employee puts a walker into the shuttle bus taking City View Towers residents back and forth between the Senior Center where they're being temporarily sheltered. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Outside City View Towers, Lowell Housing Authority Superintendent of Facilities Brian Moriarty, left, describes what happened to Lucas King, who works for RestorePro, a company that does flood drying, and came to Lowell to see if he could help. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Lowell Housing Authority workers carry trash bags of stuff removed from the City View Towers basement to a dumpster. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 29, 2022 - Aftermath of flooding in Lowell from major water main break on Father Morissette Boulevard a day earlier. Bags of material removed from the basement are lined up outside the Lowell Housing Authority's City View Towers. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

LOWELL — The Nov. 28 water main break that caused catastrophic flooding in the basement of the City View Towers on Moody Street, and which led to the emergency evacuations of its almost 200 residents, as well as residents of several homes on Race Street, is the subject Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

On the agenda is City Manager Tom Golden’s request for emergency funding, as well as several motions by city councilors regarding the city’s emergency response and preparedness plans.

Golden will ask the council to approve funding in excess of available appropriations for costs related to the disaster.

“The City of Lowell does not have sufficient, available appropriations within the fiscal 2023 budget to support the costs associated with the (flood) emergency,” Golden wrote in his request.

By state law, in emergency situations, the city’s legislative body has the authority to vote deficit spending until other financing sources, such as emergency borrowing or appropriations from available funds, can be put in place to cover the spending.

Golden said that an emergency “is a major disaster, including, a catastrophe, whether natural or otherwise, which poses an immediate threat to the health or safety of persons or property.”

The city arranged for a private contractor to pump out the basements of the three impacted homes on Race Street. Water not only inundated the homeowners’ basements, but flooded into their first floor rooms too, leaving behind a muddy skim, and damaging anything a foot above floor level.

Phillip Luy, of 34 Race St., said the cold water came in so fast, they barely had time to get his wife’s 88-year-old mother to safety on the second floor.

Even items they had stored in the garage attached to the back of the house suffered extensive water damage, soaking packages of toilet paper and paper towels stored on wooden pallets. The force of the rushing water threw five-pound laundry detergent containers off shelves.

City Councilors Kimberly Scott and Daniel Rourke’s motion will ask Golden to report on the water gate inspection program within the city. Sources in the Lowell Regional Water Utility, who did not want to be named, said that the 12 inch break occurred at a gate valve on the water main located just off Father Morissette Boulevard and Race Street in The Acre neighborhood, just west of the Tsongas Center. Gate valves function to stop or allow the flow of water.

The first call about water bursting up from the pavement came in just before 3:30 p.m. on Monday, but the torrent of water was not stopped until several hours later. The cause of the break is still under investigation.

A Google Earth photo from November 2020, showed a patched area of the street that corresponds to the area that burst Monday afternoon in front of the home on 44 Race Street. The work area extends all the way toward the City View Towers.

Nearly eight feet of water submerged critical infrastructure in the City View basement. The 190-unit structure, built in 1971, is owned and managed by the Lowell Housing Authority, and is home to seniors and people with disabilities. It is less than 200 yards from the scene of the water line failure.

In a separate motion, Scott and Rourke are also requesting that the City Manager provide the council with a report evaluating the effectiveness of the city’s emergency response plans, and update any needed improvements. Numerous city and state agencies responded to the chaotic scene.

According to Deputy Fire Chief Bob Destrempe, the flooding caused issues with the building’s electrical system.

“All their transformers are all down in the basement, and it was getting hairy as the water was coming up,” Destrempe said. “Some of the electrical was starting to smoke a little and there was a transformer that blew and it was pushing smoke into the building.”

National Grid was called to the scene, the power was shut off, and the decision was made to evacuate the building.

Evacuations of the residents commenced around 9 p.m. Monday. Destrempe said firefighter crews went to each floor to help all the residents, which included those who were unable to walk themselves out of the eight-story structure.

About 90 residents were transported via Council on Aging shuttle buses to the Senior Center on Broadway Street, where they were temporarily housed. The remaining residents were picked up by friends and family members. As of Friday, residents had been temporarily relocated to area hotels.

Executive Director Crystal Arnott of the Lowell Humane Society said that while the emergency shelter at the Senior Center opened its doors to residents, it was not equipped to house their pets.

“That night, the residents were just carrying them out of City View in their arms, and taking them to the center,” she said. “When we got there, there were cats sitting on tables and in cardboard boxes. Like their owners, the animals were probably shell-shocked, too.”

The recovery and relocation of resident pets, including birds, cats, dogs and at least one iguana, was complicated by confused lines of authority between city departments and the LHA, a quasi-governmental agency, with several animals reported still in the dark, unheated and abandoned units two days after the evacuation, during which nighttime temperatures plunged to the low 30s.

Late Thursday, Arnott said, “We picked up seven more animals, and are going back today (Friday) to pick up another cat.” It is believed that all residents — both human and animal — are now out of the building.

Councilor Vesna Nuon’s motion requests the city manager have the appropriate department update the council on the city’s emergency management plan, which was last compiled in 2009.

Neither the Facebook nor Twitter accounts for the city’s Office of Emergency Management have been updated since November 2021. Likewise, the city’s homepage offers no updates to the crisis or ways to help.

Extensive building envelope repairs were recently completed at City View Towers, which were unaffected by the flood. However, two brand-new boilers were destroyed “to the point of full replacement” according to Assistant Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer Adam Garvey.

He said that, “We had substantial damage to all of our mechanical and electrical systems.” Photographs from the scene also showed submerged washers and dryers. Board Chair Phil Shea said that the authority had recently moved vital personnel and administrative files out of the basement to the first floor, noting that otherwise would have been destroyed, too.

Given the extensive damage, as well as ongoing supply-chain and labor issues, Garvey said repairs may take some time, making it difficult to determine when residents will return to the building.

“I honestly don’t know the timeframe,” he said. “We’re hoping for the best and we’re working our hardest.”

The City Council meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6 in the second floor chambers of City Hall, 375 Merrimack St.

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