When the water went off last week due to a downtown water main break, a morning's list of hair appointments was in jeopardy of being washed away.
Twenty tonnes of earth-moving equipment, a gaping hole in the community's busiest road, and no water services to most businesses in Lac La Biche's downtown core - and they still had to get their hair done.
When you've booked a hair appointment weeks or months in advance - and just two days before the community's high school graduation ceremonies - it would have taken more than just a water main break to stop Kut N' Kurl customers. And staff at the downtown hair salon knew they had to get creative if they were going to service the flood of customers during Thursday morning's downtown water outage.
"We had no water, and we thought, 'OK what can we do" said Kut N' Kurl boss Val Bouchard.
This was no time for some watered-down plan, no hair-brained ideas was going to do for the number of do's they were scheduled to see that day, water main break or not.
"We went to Old Trail Country Water and got big bottles of water, and brought it over here to boil," said Bouchard, adding that staff also ran across the road - and around a few construction signs - to Marczak's Tru Hardware to purchase a kettle to boil large pails of water to get the shampoo basins flowing. "We had to do something, it's so crazy busy because of grad."
Since getting your hair cleaned with a pail of freshly boiled water isn't the way their customers normally are treated, staff asked each customer if they wanted to keep their appointment for today or get squeezed in at a later date.
"People would come in and we'd ask them, 'Do you want to do it another day or do it today, but with a pail and hot water?"
Standing with a kettle in one hand and a clean water pail in the other, Bouchard wasn't too surprised that no one cancelled - especially with grad weekend just hours away.
By the time the municipal crews had patched up the problem and restored water service early in the afternoon, dozens of customers had been taken care of.
Bouchard said customers took the water break in stride, and her staff really came through under an unusual situation.
"They wanted to get their hair done for grad, we wanted them to look their best, so we all just did it - and we did it well," she said, adding that many downtown businesses affected by the water break joined together to help each other out. "Old Trail Country was great. He understood what we were all going through and didn't ask for a deposit or anything, just asked us to bring the bottles back when we were done."
Lac La Biche County crews had the water main patched up by the early afternoon, leaving many downtown businesses with new memories of small town life, coping with challenges ... and in the case of Kut N' Kurl ... a new kettle for the coffee room.
County officials have yet to determine what caused the 6 a.m. break to the main water line that runs underneath Main Street. Aging infrastructure of the 30-plus year old cast iron pipes is a probable cause .
R.M.
COMMENTS:
The Lac La Biche POST's Facebook site has had a lot of activity about this story - Dave Phillips, Donna Pawlowich, Shannon Hedley & 69 others like this.
Elmer Gawryletz: Val has always done my wifes hair and it was because she always went the extra mile, Val Leona would have been very proud of you, keep up the good work. If there's a will there's a way, thank you Val not only what you have done today but what you do every day.
Eileen Ray: thats the beauty of living in a small town, our small town!!
