Though the boil water advisory hadn't officially come down yet, representatives of the Town of Midale had a pretty clear idea one was on the way after a large water main break in town. As it turned out, they were exactly right. 

The town is under a precautionary boil water advisory because of the break, one that they expect will last until early next week. This came after the water break forced them to shut the water off in town for about the length of an average workday. 

"The water went off around 9:30 and we got it back on at 20 after five (in the afternoon)," said town administrative assistant Vanessa Lund. "So it was off for the whole day mostly."

Before the town turned the water off, they had a chance to get some warnings out to the people of Midale that a shut-off was coming. Over the span of about 20 minutes, they warned as many people as they could and filled some receptacles with water themselves. 

"We just kind of reserved what we had," Lund said. "We luckily had about 20 minutes notice, we tried to give as much notice to people as we could to try to fill up. We filled up the sink here. Some people like to fill bathtubs. It's hard because normally we don't have a lot of notice, if any at all, when this happens."

From there, Midale's work crews went out to fix the water break itself. Finding the break was apparently no problem, as it gave a pretty clear sign of its location. Getting to it was another matter. 

"We knew immediately where the break was," said Lund. "You could see the water coming out of the ground from where the break had occurred. It just took them quite a while to get down to the break. They met a lot of frost underground so it took them some time to actually get to the break."

According to Lund, the resulting drinking water advisory takes some time to lift as they need to get two clear samples back from the Water Security Agency. Because this happened in the middle of the week, the weekend may push the drinking water advisory into next week. Until then, anyone in Midale should boil all water for consumption. 

"There are worse things," said Lund. "If I have to boil my water then so be it. I'd rather boil my water than not have water."