ROCANVILLE — Coming off a high from participating in this year’s Burger Week promotion, owners of the Blueberry Kitchen in Rocanville were slammed with devastating news nobody ever wants to hear. Their business was flooded and may be a total write off.
“Sunday, I stood across the street, and I just watched the river run through my building,” recalled Racquel Cozens, owner of Blueberry Kitchen. “Then on Monday, the next day, is when it hit me the reality of it, because that was just something you would never, ever expect to see in your life.”
The Cozens have been at their 113 Ellice Street location for 14 years, well-known for their good food and “the best ice cream you’ve ever had,” according to one review.
“That’s our livelihood. I still don’t know how to feel,” Cozens said.
The cause of the flooding was a water line break on the same side of the street as Blueberry Kitchen on March 2, gushing into the basement of the business.
“It broke a hole the size of a large dessert plate on the side facing us,” Cozens said. “This water came with such force that it pushed all the dirt through our foundation into our basement.”
As the basement filled, water began pushing up through the floor.
“There’s chunks of cement missing, there’s a full truckload of dirt in the basement. It’s bad,” explained Cozens. “I’m sure our building’s over 100 years old, and the basement’s probably a good 8 to 10 feet, so it took a lot of water to fill that. You could have actually gone scuba diving in the basement.”
Repair not easy
Shutting off the water wasn’t an easy task for the town crew due to the cold conditions.
“It did take some time to get the water shut off, just due to the time of year,” explained Rocanville Mayor Ron Reed. “Both the isolation valves for that block were frozen, so we had to call out a steam truck and work on getting those valves freed up to be able to isolate the leak.”
Once the valves were thawed, water service to the 100 block of Ellice Street was temporarily halted.
“We were able to fairly quickly isolate the curb stop as near as we thought to that particular business,” Mayor Reed explained. “At the time, we weren’t sure if it was a municipal water line or if it was one of the commercial lines from the building.”
Another hazard with working on valves during colder months is unknowingly snapping a valve stem, which can give the false impression that a valve is closed.
“Especially this time of year, you turn a valve and it may have snapped the stem, and you think you’re closing it, and didn’t actually close,” Mayor Reed said. “But it did take a little bit of time yesterday to get it isolated, and we are not exactly sure exactly when the leak started, or when that business on Ellice Street started to see the impact of that water flow.”
Mayor Reed was on site most of the day Sunday, but crews could not find the actual leak. On Monday, a cause for the line break was confirmed.
“There was a fairly large rock right next to the pipe that looks like just over time, vibration, frost, movement, whatever the case may be, had worked its way and damaged the pipe,” Mayor Reed explained.
The line break also prompted a Precautionary Drinking Water Advisory for the 100 block of Ellice Street, which was still under effect at press time.
“Any time there’s a loss of pressure to any specific portion of line, whether that is an isolated incident like in this case with one block, or if it’s the entire town, any of those service lines that would be affected do get a boil water advisory notice,” Mayor Reed said.
For the PDWA to be lifted, two water quality tests taken 24 hours apart need to be completed, both returned with favorable results.
Community support
Since the flooding on March 2, there’s been a flurry of meetings with the building inspector and restoration people, not to mention trying to figure out what can be salvaged from the Blueberry Kitchen. Even more disconcerting was the fact that the Cozens had just made a supply run on Saturday, including a new TV for the business.
“We got a new great big TV to put up in the ice cream shop to entertain the kids while the parents order, and not even 10 hours later, it was floating away,” Cozens said.
But there has been an overwhelming amount of support online and even visitors.
“On Sunday, when it happened, we had three kids at the door with little ice cream pails to come scoop out and save the ice cream shop,” Cozens said. “We couldn’t let them in because of the danger, but it was still adorable! It made you burst into tears, the little kids and their buckets trying to save the ice cream shop.”
