Firefighters affected by massive water outage in Tijuana

 

Tijuana, March 3.- In the face of a large fire, Tijuana firefighters will be unable to handle the emergency due to the massive water outage, which has affected 73 percent of the city. Therefore, the fire department is on alert, said the head of the department, Rafael Carrillo Venegas.

“Any water outage, even if partial and temporary, affects us in a large part of the city, obviously. Not to mention that these days, until the weekend, we'll have a water outage in 73% of the city. What we're doing is working with the CESPT to see which water wells they have enabled and then dispatch the units to supply water.” 

Carillo Venegas said he held meetings with the State Public Services Commission to locate water tanks or wells that could be used in the event of a water supply emergency. Furthermore, prior to the outage, the Fire Department stored water in all trucks and fire engines; these will only be used in an emergency, as they must ration the water. 

Vandalized hydrants

In addition to the lack of drinking water, 80 percent of water hydrants have been vandalized. 

"We're still at this figure (80% of them not working) because vandalism of hydrants is still prevalent. The hydrants that are open or working, we need to see which ones don't have water, which are precisely the neighborhoods where the shutoff was just now. Even those that are operational may not have water because the water valve is closed, perhaps because there was a water outage and the main line was shut off."