MIDLAND, Texas — Residents at Airline Crossing in Midland still have little to no water running through their faucets.
The situation remained during Christmas weekend, leaving residents with hardly anything for cleaning, showering or cooking.
"It made things a lot more difficult, especially because when we're cooking and having dinner, then you got all the dishes that come with it, and then we have to sit there and buy our own water, then boil it in a pot for it to get warm so we can wash all the dishes, it was kind of a pain," said Jonathon McNeil, a two-year resident of Airline Crossing.
Meanwhile, management of the mobile home park has issued a boil water notice to their residents and transferred in water from an off-site location to their on-site wells. This water, however, quickly ran out.
They tell NewsWest 9 that water pipes have frozen over due to the recent cold stretch that has hit Midland, while at least 17 reported leaks forced some pipes to be shut off while maintenance worked on repairs.
"It’s been in our meetings and everything, we’ve had a problem with the water here, and at first, it was a water boiling, you got to boil the water," said Santos Solis III, another resident. "The pipes are old."
Management of Airline Crossing brought in 20 pallets of bottled water to offer some semblance of relief to their residents. Due to the high amount of elderly living within the mobile homes, some residents took to delivering cases of water themselves.
"We decided that we’re driving up and down streets and we’ve seen someone outside and say, 'Do you have water? Do you need water, we have pallets of water, can we bring you some?' and then we would tell the able bodied ones that we saw getting out of there cars if they can come up and help us take water to your neighbors," said Nancy White, who helped deliver water to her neighbors in her car.
Currently, there is no estimated time that the water at Airline Crossing will return to normal, but many volunteers have offered to help maintenance fix the issues.
"We were blessed, we got one maintenance guy, his name is Matt, he is awesome, he tries to do everything he can for us," Solis III said. "On top of that they did bring water for the residents here and we have awesome members of the community as well."
The Airline Crossing management did release a statement to residents on December 24th with more details about the situation. They have declined to speak further on the situation, and Follett USA has not responded to our request for comment.