Crews work to get flooded building on Water St. dried out

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- The bitterly cold temperatures we saw last week have been causing problems for days now. Crews spent Sunday, January 12th cleaning up after a pipe burst in a building on Water Street -- and the burst pipe led to power outages for folks in downtown Milwaukee and the Third Ward on Sunday. Crews were able to get the water out of the building -- and are now working to dry it completely.

"The basement/parking structure was flooded (Sunday) with about three feet of standing water," Jacob Tibbits said.

That's more than 300,000 gallons of water -- enough to fill about half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Tibbits says crews managed to clear the water from the building by Monday -- saying crews worked until 11:00 p.m. Sunday pumping the place out. Now, the focus is on drying the building completely.

"We're working on getting our dehumidifiers dropped right now. We're getting heat in here so by the end of (Monday) our goal is to have everything good and dry," Tibbits said.

Of course, with an area that's been as soaked as this one, you have to wonder about mold.

"The dehumidifier that we're loading down right now is going to control and stabilize the environment. In order to have any kind of microbial growth, it has to be a certain environment. Getting this guy in there right now is going to eliminate that kind of environment," Tibbits said.

Tibbits says crews and the building's owners are doing everything they can to get things back to normal for the five tenants who operate out of the building.

"We had it out fairly fast but, you know, you got elevator shafts and pits like that that we're working on getting it all touched up now," Tibbits said.

We Energies says the building remained without power Monday morning. We Energies crews were waiting for the go-ahead from the crews on scene.