Jenks Forced To Shut Off Water After Main Break

The weather is wreaking havoc underground.

A water main break cut off water to thousands in Jenks, Wednesday afternoon.

The good news, it was fixed by Wednesday evening.

A frozen pipe burst around 2 p.m. leaving a big mess, and sending local businesses scrambling.

The bar at George's Pub in Jenks was empty.

All the employees clocked in, but instead of working, according to Morgan Fore, the manager of George's Pub, they were waiting around for the water to turn back on.

Operations superintendent, Gary Head, says a pipe burst just beneath one of city's newly paved roads.

"This is gonna happen in all towns, everywhere; it's just part of the freeze-thaw. We had that deep freeze for several days and the ground contracts and expands, and that's what happened here."

Head says the break cut off water to more than half the town; which is why the workers at George's were playing the waiting game on one of their busier nights of the week.

"This time on a Wednesday night it's burger night, so normally we have a pretty good crowd going on," said Fore.

Around the corner, the owners of Sip Coffee Bar, were making due, despite being without one of the key ingredients to make coffee during their happy hour.

"Our machines run off of water," said owner Virgil Moore. "I try to keep an extra pot of coffee in the refrigerator all the time for those that want iced coffee. After the water went off I was able to just continue making those drinks out of the coffee I'd put aside."

Over at the broken water main, workers fought the freezing weather to fix it before dinner.

The water was working again by about 6:30 Wednesday evening.

As for the road, it reopened but will have to be repaved, which will probably happen sometime this spring.