MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Some units at the River City Heights Townhomes near Memphis International Airport have been without hot water for about a week after a car crashed into their main gas line.
On December 13th, a car crashed into the line, knocking out the gas to several units at the Townhomes.
MLGW said the initially-damaged gas line was fixed, but they found safety violations at the complex.
“As a precaution, the gas meter remains locked until repairs are completed and approved by Code Enforcement,” an MLGW spokesperson said.
The complex management says they want the issues fixed but are at the “mercy of Memphis Light Gas and Water and Code Enforcement” and they said they’ve spent thousands of dollars to resolve all the problems.
“There’s not an ability to isolate individual buildings so, that necessitated the inspection of all units,” Code Enforcement Administrator Ron Bethea said. “Which I think there’s 100 units out there and the problems that were observed had to be repaired by the contractor in order for the service to be restored.”
Residents said it’s been days since they’ve had hot water. They also said this isn’t an issue they normally see at the townhomes. As of Thursday, the units have been checked and according to code enforcement, good for MLGW to head back to the complex and reinstate the gas meter so residents gas appliances can begin working again.
“We had four inspectors out there today -- including a senior inspector -- and they went through the units and as of the start of this meeting (2:00PM) – it was confirmed that the units have been repaired and the service has been released to light gas and water,” Bethea said. “They have our authorization to reconnect service.”
He says after code enforcement gives the green light to MLGW – issues with heat and hot water are typically fixed within a few hours – but could be faster given the weather conditions. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the main gas line providing for every unit will likely need to be updated in the near future.
“We do think that moving forward there’s probably going to have to be some alterations made to the distributions out there so that this problem doesn’t happen again,” Bethea said.