Red Cliff Residents Go Without Water For Nearly 4 Days

RED CLIFF, Colo. (CBS4) - A deep winter freeze forced the small mountain town of Red Cliff to go without water for nearly 4 days, and oddly enough it was the lack of snow that played a major role.

Red Cliff is a town of about 350 people off Highway 24 in Eagle County.

After going out Thursday night the water came back on Sunday morning after crews from the water district worked around the clock the entire time. They were still working on Sunday,

"Thursday night it was about 8 p.m. and they didn't have enough water to run the dish washer, and I said, 'Shut it down.' " Stephen Russ with Mango's Mountain Grill said.

Manogo's Mountain Grill is the only restaurant in Red Cliff. It was back open Sunday after being closed for a busy weekend, severely hurting business.

Water was cut off to the town after the main froze.

"We've had outages where it lasted a few hours, or maybe a couple of houses up on the high point of town may be without water but nothing this extreme, nothing that's lasted days on end," Red Cliff Mayor Ramon Montoya said.

"The main line that comes down the valley from the water treatment plant had a blockage in it. It was frozen at some point but we really couldn't determine where it was," said Linn Brooks, Eagle River Water and Sanitation District General Manager.

For more than 72 hours crews worked to unfreeze the pipes.

"We're literally dumping 140 degree water into the system and that's solving it," Montoya said.

While residents waited they got drinking water from the town and most people took to nature for other means.

"It was me doing what everyone else in town was doing -- grabbing a pole, dipping it into the creek and using that to fill the toilet and the wash tub and that was it," Montoya said. "Now that the crisis is solved we're in the next mode of how to pay for all this and that's going to be a big deal."

The water district says the pipes aren't buried as deep in Red Cliff because they can't, bed rock is at the surface.

The low snowpack, which usually helps insulate the pipes, just isn't there this winter, so it makes the shallow pipes more susceptible to the temperatures.

Town administrators from Red Cliff plan to meet with Eagle County this week to get help paying the estimated $60,000 bill.