Water being restored in Williamsburg was no ‘Christmas miracle’

After several days of residents in the Highland Park area of Williamsburg being without water last week, I saw one headline describe the restoration of service as a “Christmas miracle.” It was anything but.

A “miracle” would imply that some type of divine intervention took place, and that water service being returned to affected residents was due to something other than a large group of hard-working folks coming together in order to fix what was a very serious issue.

If you aren’t aware, a waterline break occurred underwater last week near the bridge located between Forcht Bank and the mall in Williamsburg. If you drove over the bridge, you could clearly see the water bubbling up where the break had occurred.

For the next 3-4 days, crews worked tirelessly to reach the damage, repair it, and begin routing water back to nearby houses and businesses. It was a tough job, and I commend everyone who had a hand in correcting the problem.

Williamsburg Mayor Roddy Harrison is personally thanking the many groups and individuals for their efforts last week. If you followed along with the News Journal’s social media coverage of the incident, then you will know there are several who deserve a pat on the back.

Although I wish that nobody had to go through the inconvenience of not having water service for an extended period of time, it was nice to see how the community banded together in order to assist those who were affected. Even folks from other nearby communities were coming in, donating bottled water, and generally doing what they could to help.

Just coming off of Christmas, it might be easy to say that it was the Christmas spirit that caused so many to step in and lend a hand. I don’t think this was quite the case, though, as I have seen before how quick the people of this region are to help one another in times of great need, regardless of the time of year.

Sometimes southeast Kentucky gets painted in a bad light. Sure, we have our issues here just like everywhere else, but hey, you can’t deny that we love to lift each other up out of dire situations whenever the opportunity arises. We’ve seen it when communities get nearly leveled by tornadoes, we saw it last year during historic flooding, and we see it again in instances like this, when a water outage forces a large chunk of a town to lose access to clean water for drinking, bathing, flushing, etc.

Once again, good work to all those who spent their time and energy during the holiday week to help the folks living and working in the Highland Park area. Well done.