Family grateful for DPW’s quick response | News, Sports, Jobs

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Metropolis employees got here to the rescue of this Taft Place residence over the summer time on this picture offered by Joe Dunbar.

When folks perform a little further for one another, it normally doesn’t make the headlines.

Nonetheless, Joe Dunbar needs the Dunkirk Division of Public Works to get slightly publicity for its assist with a water line rupture at his household’s property.

Dunbar emailed the OBSERVER just lately about how the DPW, particularly Water Upkeep Supervisor Rob Curry and his crew, rushed to assist after the July 8 incident.

Curry and different employees came visiting to Dunbar’s mom’s dwelling on Taft Place, on a Friday night, to help after an unintentional pipe break.

“Friday after 6 p.m., that was the spectacular factor,” Dunbar mentioned in a follow-up interview. “It’s one factor within the workday.”

The pipe break “was our fault,” he mentioned. “We began changing waterlines … as a result of a few of them have been already leaking.” When the contractor shut off the primary line into the home, “it actually burst in his hand.”

The DPW employees needed to discover the shutoff valve outdoors, which was lined by many years of tree development and particles. “They discovered it but it surely took two hours of digging,” Dunbar mentioned. They wound utilizing a so-called “suck truck” to blast by roots and rocks.

“They knew what they have been doing. That they had the instruments, coaching and experience, and so they did it,” Dunbar mentioned.

Dunbar mentioned DPW did far more on the positioning. They hooked his mom’s home as much as an emergency reference to a neighbor’s line. “They took the neighbor off the (water) meter so he didn’t need to pay,” he mentioned.

Additionally, a crew got here out the next Tuesday to chop and take away the tree development that lined the unique line and valve. The Dunbars later had a brand new connection put in place.

Dunbar mentioned he and his household “are so grateful for the town of Dunkirk’s companies serving to us after we wanted it most.” His mom who lives on the house is Mary Dunbar, a retired nurse who labored at Brooks Memorial Hospital for a few years.