SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — At Platinum Mechanical in Spokane Valley, the phones just keep ringing.
"Yep. Non-stop," laughed co-owner Jeff Hatcher.
He's been helping play dispatcher for calls that have carried on from a frigid weekend. With temperatures still failing to reach zero degrees Monday, the calls for frozen or burst pipes, flooding, and other issues persisted.
"Everything's frozen?" Hatcher asked one caller, before saying he'd check the schedule to see how soon a crew could be out.
"We had about 350 calls over the weekend. Typically on a weekend you may get a couple calls," he said.
Denise Brooks and her family waited three days for someone to come out after her daughter found no running water downstairs. Upstairs, she says she was lucky enough to have cold water and one running toilet.
"We've got cold water, no problem," she demonstrated in her Spokane Valley kitchen. "But as soon as you turn it to hot – nothing."
She tried heat tape and other tactics.
"They tried to come out and defrost it but as soon as they took the heat gun off it, it immediately froze back up," she said. "Yeah, it's not been fun. The kids haven't been able to take a bath or shower, can't do laundry, can't take showers, can't run the dishwasher."
Others across the region experienced even worse situations. Sasha Hunter sent KREM 2 News video of water pouring from his light fixtures and filling lightbulbs after an upstairs neighbor's unit flooded.
At Platinum, it's been all hands on deck with eight two-person crews, including excavation employees playing plumber.
"You can see it's just back-to-back-to-back, all the way across," Hatcher said, scrolling through calls for service that began before 6 am. "Goes up to almost 11 pm."
Hatcher said the cold snap happened so quickly, that the precautions of leaving cupboards open or leaving faucets dripping couldn't help everyone prevent pipe issues.
"Unbelievable. It's just since Friday afternoon up to basically right now it's been non-stop," he said.
A plumbing crew was due at Denise's home Monday afternoon after she told them she could wait to get the hot water fixed. She knows it could be so much worse.
"At least I have some water," she said. "You know, not that I wanted to not have a shower last night."
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