A pipe from the Canal de Isabel II burst this Friday around half past one in the Toledo ring road in the Arganzuela district of Madrid, creating a large pool of water that tumbled down the Strait of Soria. The water has caused traffic problems on several streets in the area, flooded a national police station and a supermarket garage and closed three metro stations in Madrid, a spokeswoman for Emergencies reported. The disturbance has caused water outages or negative pressure in the districts of Arganzuela, Centro, Retiro and Puente de Vallecas in the first hours of the incident, but Canal de Isabel II has not quantified the exact number of those affected at the moment. The public company’s technicians managed to stop the leak and are making the necessary repairs. Although some neighborhoods have restored supplies, the areas closest to the repair work are still without water. Workers hope the incident will be cleared up around 5 p.m. this Saturday. To alleviate the impact, bins with bottled water at number 86 of the Ronda de Valencia will be made available to residents until supplies are restored, they have reported on their website.
“The water has reached Paseo de las Acacias, but in that area it doesn’t cause much of a problem,” a neighbor who was at a nearby gym at the time of the event told this newspaper, from which he had been expelled, because the light went out. The firefighters who traveled to the area to remove the water that entered a National Police station in Arganzuela, at number 26 of the Toledo ring road, in front of the Casino de la Reina park, have already withdrawn from the site after finding the drained all liquid and ensured that no more incidents occur. The office is out of light and has had to suspend operations until power returns. A police spokeswoman reports that the people who were in the cell during the incident were transferred to the central detainee register in Moratalaz. According to reports from the Madrid Emergency Service, the Metropolitan Police have restored traffic in the area that has been closed for four hours.
The water has also affected a supermarket garage where firefighters’ intervention was not required, underground galleries through which gas and electricity flow, and several subway stations where the water has already disappeared. , explains the spokesman for Emergencies Madrid . Firefighters did not determine that there were any problems in the galleries.
Canal de Isabel II technicians have deployed four brigades and are in the area five hours after the incident to fix the fault. A Canal spokesman has detailed that it is a gallery breach, meaning it is not on the surface nor easily accessible. “The break was located in the joint area between a 300mm diameter pipe and another 900mm diameter pipe,” he explained.
A lane was established for buses operating on the first route during the incident, which disrupted traffic on the Toledo bypass and Soria road. Arrests were made in the area “due to the intervention of emergency teams,” it said Mobility Management Center in Madrid. The affected metro stations are Acacias and Pirámides on line 5, where operations have already been normalized from 7:30 p.m. The stations were closed from just before 3 p.m.
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