Katie and Mike Harding weathered Hurricane Isabel from their brand-new condo in South Riding last week, where they have lived since July.
“We get up in the morning; our electricity was on; we had water. We showered and said, ‘Wow, we’re really lucky,’” said Katie Harding. “Then we went out for breakfast and we came back and at some point you turn on the faucet and nothing and it was a complete shock.”
On Friday afternoon, Harding said there was “not even a dribble” coming from her tap. So she and her husband took all the Tupperware containers and water bottles they could find and took them out in front of the South Riding Town Hall where the Loudoun County Sanitation Authority had set up a water distribution truck, supplying residents with clean drinking water.
“We’re still kind of moving in. We have no idea where our coolers are,” said Harding, surveying her collection of water-filled containers.
Larry Moon, a Sanitation Authority employee who was manning the pump, said he had given away about 1,000 gallons to about 150 people.
South Riding's 3,500 households and other parts of eastern Loudoun County get their water from the Fairfax County Water Authority, which was shut down by a power failure during the storm. But the Fairfax County Water Authority provides roughly half the water used in Loudoun County, according to Loudoun County Sanitation Authority spokesperson Samantha Villegas.
With no electricity to operate the pumps and the sanitation equipment, the authority could not provide clean water to its customers. By mid-afternoon Friday, power had been restored to the Fairfax water plants but it had not reached Loudoun County yet, said Moon.
“This area is the main area for this problem,” he said.
The Loudoun County Sanitation Authority’s water truck had been parked in front of the Town Hall since about 11 a.m. and Moon said it was probably going to move soon. But not before Renee Rodriguez pulled up in her minivan to fill her cooler with water.
“We don’t have any pressure at all,” she said. She needed water to bathe her twins, added Rodriguez, a mother of five.
“Just the two three-year-olds,” she said.
<1b>—By David Harrison