BIG SPRING A 20-inch water main ruptured early Tuesday and cut nearly half the city's water supply off, administrative secretary Robin Eudy of the city's water utility maintenance office said.

Nearly everyone east of Baylor Street in Big Spring, where the water main is located, has been left with either no water or with very low pressure after the main broke. Eudy could not provide an estimate on the number of customers affected, but said the entire communities of Coahoma and Sand Springs in Howard County were also left dry since they fed off of Big Spring's supply.

Eudy said they received the first phone call at 8 a.m. Tuesday. As of 6 p.m., crews were still trying to fix the pipe and restore the flow, and phones continued to ring in her office at a rate of once every two minutes during the phone interview.

No boil notices were made during the outage.

"If they do have water, which honestly I don't think anyone has water, then it's safe," she said.

She didn't know at 6 p.m. when workers would be able to restore the water, but she said they would continue working around the clock until they did.

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