Officials: Water mostly restored after outage leaves 5,000 homes without water

A water main break on Tucson’s southwest side left about 5,000 homes without water and prompted the closure of five area schools on Tuesday. 

The outage began at about 7 p.m. Monday near the intersection of South Sheridan Avenue and West Irvington Road, west of South Kinney Road, according to Tucson Water officials. The area impacted stretches from Tucson Estates, which borders Tucson Mountain Park, to south of West Valencia Road.

Tucson Water officials said most residents had their water service restored by Wednesday morning.

However, due to the size of the affected area, officials urged residents in that zone to boil water for the next 48 hours before consuming it as a precaution.

Five schools in the Tucson Unified School District canceled classes for Tuesday and Wednesday due to the water outage, according to district spokeswoman Karla Escamilla.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

TUSD shut down Johnson, Vesey, Banks and Warren elementary schools and Valencia Middle School. Escamilla said the schools should be back to their normal schedules on Thursday.

Officials aren’t sure what caused the outage, said Fernando Molina, a spokesman for Tucson Water.

Tucson Water set up two distribution sites Tuesday where they supplied hundreds of residents with cases of water, as well as installed portable toilets and hand-washing stations.

Officials will supply water to residents at the southwest corner of West Ajo Way and South Kinney Road, and at 5900 W. Western Way Circle until service is restored.