At GPRS, we believe that what’s underneath matters. There could be any number of surprises hidden underground, waiting to derail your project as soon as you begin to excavate, which is why it’s vital to obtain accurate, complete utility locating and mapping data prior to breaking out the shovels and heavy machinery.
But you don’t have to take our word for it.
In Topeka, Kansas, workers excavating for an underground water line project linked to the replacement of a viaduct in the city’s downtown district recently uncovered a Topeka Fire Department cistern built in 1878.
According to an article in The Topeka Capital-Journal, the crew discovered the cistern while using heavy equipment to dig into the street to replace a water line near an intersection.
Contractor Tony Emerson, a former Topeka City Council member, told the paper that water gushed out of the cistern after the bucket from a piece of heavy equipment ripped into it while digging.
That water had been sitting in the cistern “just waiting for that fire that never came,” Emerson said.
Topeka Fire Marshal Alan Stahl told the publication that he found an online article from the Topeka Daily Commonwealth dated June 28, 1878, detailing construction of the cistern, which was intended to have a capacity of “1,000 barrels.”
“It is fortunately situated near a never-failing spring, from which it will be supplied with water,” the article reads.
Additionally, Stahl found a city report from 1907 which indicated that the cistern was still being maintained at that time for emergency use. He told the Capital-Journal that the cistern was among eight built by Topeka’s city government to be used by the fire department. Each cistern held between 40,000 and 60,000 gallons of water and were used on an emergency basis as late as the 1930s, according to the 1993 publication Impact of Water on the Development of Topeka, by Keith Krause.
According to a December 1909 Topeka State Journal article which Stahl also uncovered, natural gas accumulation inside these cisterns had resulted in three of them exploding that month. The last of those explosions occurred when a city engineer threw a lighted piece of waste into the opening of a manhole atop one of the cisterns.
The article says that explosion created a hole 40 feet in diameter while shaking buildings “all over the business portion of Topeka,” though no one was killed or hurt. A city employee reportedly died earlier that same month from burns sustained while looking for the source of gas fumes in the same cistern.
Emerson told the Capital-Journal that his crew only removed the center portion of the cistern because that’s all they needed to do to complete their water line replacement project.
GPRS Helps You Avoid Subsurface Damage
The story of what happened in Topeka ended up being an interesting footnote in an otherwise routine utility replacement job.
It could have been much worse.
According to research conducted for GPRS in 2021 by Finch, the average cost of a single utility strike is approximately $56,000.
But it’s not just your budget that’s at risk; severing an active electrical line or gas main could result in injury or death. The cisterns in Topeka exploded three times in a single month back when they were in active use, so there was a very real, very dangerous threat to the workers who uncovered this piece of local history.
GPRS provides 99.8%+ accurate utility locating and mapping services designed to mitigate the risk of subsurface damage when you need to break ground. Utilizing ground penetrating radar (GPR) scanners and electromagnetic (EM) locators, our SIM-certified Project Managers find and map the buried utilities in your project area so you know where it’s safe to dig and where putting a shovel or excavator bucket into the ground could have disastrous consequences.
Additionally, our NASSCO-certified Video Pipe Inspection Project Managers use remote-controlled sewer pipe inspection rovers and push-fed sewer scopes to locate and inspect sewer and stormwater lines.
All this data is at your fingertips thanks to SiteMap® (patent pending), our project & facility data management application that provides accurate existing conditions documentation to protect your assets and people.
Easily, yet securely accessible via any computer, tablet, or smartphone, SiteMap® allows you and your team to plan, design, dig, and build better around accurate, complete infrastructure data.
GPRS is currently scheduling live, personal SiteMap® demos. Click below to schedule your demo today!
GPRS Sponsors Water & Sewer Damage Awareness Week
GPRS sponsors Water & Sewer Damage Awareness Week (WSDAW), an annual municipal water safety event held in October. If you would like to schedule a WSDAW educational event for your community or facility, click here to register.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Benefits of Underground Utility Mapping?
Having an updated and accurate map of your subsurface infrastructure reduces accidents, budget overruns, change orders, and project downtime caused by dangerous and costly subsurface damage.
How does SiteMap® assist with Utility Mapping?
SiteMap®, powered by GPRS, is the industry-leading infrastructure management program. It is a single source of truth, housing the 99.8%+ accurate utility locating, concrete scanning, video pipe inspection, leak detection, and 3D laser scanning data our Project Managers collect on your job site. And the best part is you get a complimentary SiteMap® Personal Subscription when GPRS performs a utility locate for you.
Does SiteMap® Work with my Existing GIS Platform?
SiteMap® allows for exporting of data to SHP, GeoJSON, GeoPackage, and DXF directly from any user’s account that either owns or has a job shared to their account. All these file formats can be imported and utilized by other GIS packages if manually imported by the user. More information can be found at SiteMap.com.
