In Liberia, there are four communities in Margibi Country — two on each side of the Marshall Highway. Each community used to have about 500 residents. Lifewater helped provide safe drinking water in this area by drilling one well in each of the four communities. All the wells were located within a two-kilometer radius of each other.
In 2009, the pump in one of these villages broke down. The villagers simply went across the highway and used that community’s well. The broken pump was not fixed. Within a few months, the load of 1,000 people drawing from the adjacent village’s well caused it to also break down.
These 1,000 people then all walked down the road to village #3 to draw water from their well. Having 1,500 people pumping from the one well was far too many, and that pump soon broke down. All these people then went to the last pump in the area. There were non-stop line-ups and this pump quickly wore out from the overuse.
One community failing to fix its broken pump started a chain reaction that quickly led to the entire area losing its access to safe drinking water. Lifewater named this phenomenon “Cascading Pump Failure.”
With no functioning pumps, all 2,000 residents of the four communities reverted to fetching drinking water from stagnant swamps. This continued for several months until a Lifewater team was finally alerted to the situation. All the pumps required simple repairs which were completed in a day for just $100!
Cascading pump failure will not occur if a community has a maintenance plan in place, takes immediate action to repair a broken pump, and has an alternate source of water to draw from while their primary pump is being repaired.
The adjacent towns could have protected their supply by having a trained Well Caretaker, by locking the pump after their water had been drawn, and by having their Pump Repair Technician help the first community to fix its broken pump before others started failing.
