Low water pressure shuts down bathrooms, restaurants at Bush airport for hours

Travelers make their way through Terminal A at Bush Intercontinental Airport Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019, in Houston. Travelers make their way through Terminal A at Bush Intercontinental Airport Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019, in Houston. Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Low water pressure shuts down bathrooms, restaurants at Bush airport for hours 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Most bathrooms and restaurants were closed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport for approximately five hours Saturday after a construction crew hit a water line.

During a busy travel day over Memorial Day weekend, the airport had to go into a water conservation mode, hand-flushing toilets and asking restaurants to cease operations that required water.



All terminals except Terminal D were affected; it has a back-up water tank system, said Bill Begley, an airport spokesperson.

A construction crew was working on a project on the air field when workers hit the water line at approximately 9:45 a.m.. The airport shut down the damaged line and took steps to reroute water to return to normal operations, Begley said.

Travelers had to wait in lines to use the restrooms, with airport staff manually flushing toilets to keep the restrooms clean and operational.

At 2:30 p.m., operations were returning to normal, and bathrooms and restaurants began to re-open, Begley said.

"We started taking steps to get the water pressure back up, and it came back slow, but steady," Begley said.

No flights or any other operations were affected by the low water pressure, Begley said.

Robert Downen contributed to this report