MORRIS, Okla. — Thursday evening and into early Friday morning, water was out in Morris and other rural communities around Okmulgee. Morris schools canceled classes Friday due to the water break. 2 News Oklahoma went there to hear from neighbors.
While we spent the afternoon in Morris, we found word gets around quickly. This tale of the water going out led us to different people and different answers. The timelines were different from house to house.
We spoke with about a dozen neighbors, but only one of them wanted to go on camera. That was Jimmy Fleetwood, who, luckily, had no shortage of drinking water.
"Well, I always buy bottled water. The only thing is having to use the restrooms," Fleetwood said.
Neither he nor his neighbors could pin down an exact timeline. One grandmother said she couldn’t do the dishes after dinner Thursday night but woke up to water flowing on Friday morning.
We still wanted to get some more concrete answers, so we went to the two ladies behind the desk at city hall. They declined a formal interview, but they told us about the word around town from their friends and neighbors. The same story we heard from the gentleman who lives next door to city hall. It’s different for everyone.
Our journey around Morris took us to the hub for Rural Water District 20. Their manager didn’t want to go on camera either. He told our crew that a water line broke in Okmulgee, and Okmulgee is the supplier of Morris' water. Crews worked through the overnight hours, and by 2:30 am, we're told, the repairs were finished. It was just a matter of getting the water flowing again.
This affects people outside of Morris, too. We spoke to one man who’s having a hard time without his water.
"I don’t know what the problem is; there've been some issues for a while," Desmond Nash said.
Nash says the water in his house is acting strangely.
"This morning, the pressure was off. It kept spewing water everywhere, and then it wouldn’t have any water at all," Nash said.
He hasn’t been able to take a shower, but when it comes to drinking water, he’s OK.
"Drinking water? We use bottled water anyway, because the water’s not that good," Nash said.
The repairs happened about as fast as word spread in these small towns. The water is flowing again, and school should be back in session Monday morning. It's an inconvenience they hope to avoid in the future.
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