ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. -- Many residents affected by the water main break in Erie County were unaware anything had happened until early Thursday morning.
"When you have a massive leak on a 30-inch line, you're gonna lose water in a hurry and there's not much we can do until we get there," said Earl Jann, Erie County Water Authority chairman.
That was the case Thursday night all over northern Erie County as a broken water main caused residents to experience low water pressure and in some cases no water at all.
"Approxiamately 209,000 people were without water, or had low water pressure, either or," said Jann.
Jann says crews located the water break around 10 p.m. in a field in Amherst near the Dent Tower.
"Where you don't have people seeing the water bubble up from the ground so you don't hear about it until the effects have taken place on the customers," said Jann.
He says the pipe was old and had worn down causing the leak.
"Over time cracks develop in the outer layers the wires deteriorate and then that pipe is weakened and it can leak," said Jann.
Crews quickly worked to close valves and reroute water to restore flow to residential areas.
"The system does allow for moving water around if there are broken pipes and that's how water pressure was then restored to the homes," said Erie County executive, Mark Poloncarz.
However, many residents weren't informed of the break or the potential health risks that it could cause.
"Have asked our customers to supply us with email addresses and cell phone numbers so we can send out alerts, now many of our customers have not provided us with that information so we don't have that available," said Jann said.
Jann says they are working to develop a robo-call system to prevent confusion during future leaks.
The Water Authority acknowledges that most of its outdated pipe needs to be replaced.
They say they've started to replace pipes this year starting on Niagara Falls Boulevard and Walden Avenue.