CLEVELAND — Along the Lake Erie coast, it was all eyes on the sky for the Labor Day holiday weekend. We found Tim Netemeyer from Ohio City keeping a close eye on the military jets in town for a demonstration at the Cleveland Air Show.
"Well, I can see enough to tell that that's an F-15," he said while enjoying the spectacle. Netemeyer knows what he's talking about, too.
"Thirty-seven years at Boeing will do that," he said. "I built F-15s for 20 years."
The raw power of the F-15 still gives him a thrill.
"As soon as the landing gear left the runway, they would just stand it on its tail. It was just awesome to see," he said through laughter.
But on Monday, Netemeyer kept finding his eyes drawn back to the ground. A water main break along the Shoreway has been slowing down traffic for days.
"Thursday," Netemeyer said. "That's the first time I saw it."
We showed you the problems stemming from this water main break on Friday and again over the weekend. This Labor Day, it continues to be a problem.
We saw driver after driver getting around a closed section of the Shoreway by making a loop. They'd get off at West 45th Street, then get right back on.
Doug Long from North Ridgeville said he saw others handling the closure.
"As it goes now, people are just deciding they're not going to stop they're just going to keep going right through it," he said.
"What I think is, with all that water you know, you potentially could collapse the road," Netemeyer said.
This is the latest in a string of summer road water main breaks across Northeast Ohio this season. Jack Kline, who lives in Cleveland, noted the uniqueness.
"Seems like we find these kind of things in the winter or something froze or something happened. It is kind of strange that it just popped up here in he summer."
We told you about the break that caused the road to collapse and swallow vehicles on the city's East Side at the end of July.
That's why Netemeyer would like to see this fixed sooner rather than later.
"They're been out here every day. Like, yesterday they were right there by that convenient store on the corner. I don't know what they were doing but it was one of the big Cleveland Water Trucks," he said. "They didn't fix anything. I don't know what they were doing. Monitoring the situation maybe. I don't know."
Cleveland Water hasn't given us any indication that something like that will happen in this case. The agency did tell us it's "actively working to address it." Over the weekend, Cleveland Water told us its crews were working to close valves in the area that may not be near where the actual water is bubbling up.
"I'm sure they'll fix it eventually," Netemeyer said.
Until then, he'll try to keep his eyes on the sky. Not on the ground.
"The F-15 has enough power to take off like a rocket," he said. "It'll go two and a half times the speed of sound."
"Definitely not a convenient time for this to happen," she asked.
His simple response: "No."
News 5 will continue to track the efforts to repair this break and keep you posted as we learn new information.
