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EASTCHESTER, N.Y. The Town of Eastchester has opened a warming center at Lake Isle for the roughly 320 households still without gas on one of the coldest days of the season after Friday's water main break.
Eastchester Police Lt. Robert Jensen said that gas will not be restored to residents until Con Edison performs house by house inspections. "They have to check each individual house to make sure the lines are not damaged before the gas goes back on," Jensen said on Saturday morning.
The gas was shut down at roughly 2 p.m. Friday afternoon after a 30-inch water main ruptured sending a river of water down White Plains Road and flooding homes down the hill onto Club Way.
It took hours to shut the water down, and in the interim the road was closed in both directions. That led to heavy traffic on White Plains Road and on the back roads behind Lake Isle becoming hopelessly snarled.
Eastchester police said that a portion of the road for northbound and southbound traffic had been re-opened early Saturday morning.
"Hopefully that will help out at least a little bit," Jensen said.
Jensen said Con Edison crews worked through the night on the quarter mile stretch of White Plains Road between California Road and Burnham Road. They were then able to determine the damage to gas lines. There was no impact on water services to Eastchester residents because the water main belongs to the Westchester Joint Water Works and is a supply line for the villages of Larchmont and Mamaroneck.
On Saturday morning, WJWW manager Anthony Conetta said that connections in its system were able to be used in order to minimize the number of customers without water.
"The only impact to some of our customers may have been temporary low pressure or brown water," Conetta said.
Conetta also said workers were trying to isolate the segment of pipe that is leaking and replace it. There was no timetable on how long that would take, Connetta said. He noted repair work would not begin until Con Edison had completed its inspection.
Jensen said anyone interested in going to the warming center at Lake Isle should call Eastchester police at 961-3464, so they can be directed to a back gate at Lake Isle in order to avoid the inevitable traffic tie-ups on White Plains Road.
"At this time we still don't know how long it will be until everything has been restored and the area is back to normal," Jensen said.
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