Artesia citizens clear out stores after town water outage

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – The water is back on in Artesia.

Everyone in the town was left bone dry after a main water line burst Monday evening.

There’s around 700 people who live in Artesia, and they all went nearly 15 hours without running water.

Their only option was to visit stores and restaurants with hopes to make it through the night.

You never know what you have until it’s gone.

“You couldn’t use the bathroom. If you wanted to do something you couldn’t flush the commode or nothing like that so it was kind of hard it was real hard.” said Ferguson.

Lynn Ferguson said it was a rough couple of hours. She described residents stocking up on water, and local stores almost ran out.

“I brought 15, 15 jugs. Cause I didn’t know when it was going to come back on. Yeah I was prepared. I had to get up and heat water up and do the same thing and get going. I had to brush my teeth with a bottle of water,” said Ferguson.

However, by the afternoon, community members were met with some good news.

Mayor Jimmy Sanders said crews were out working on the water lines since Monday night.

“We have drain systems up under the streets, and the water was going through our drain system and it wasn’t coming out on top,” said Mayor Sanders.

Sanders hoped something like this won’t happen again in the future.

“We are so glad our citizens were so courteous to the town of Artesia in their time of need for water. Most people don’t understand how valuable water is in the community,” said Sanders.

“Thank God they got it going,” said Ferguson.

Artesia was placed under a boil water advisory until further notice.