Cape Coral opened two more boil water areas on Tuesday morning, around SE Santa Barbara Place and SW 1st Avenue, taking the city total to five

The City of Cape Coral opened two more precautionary boil water areas early Tuesday, one around 2706 SE Santa Barbara Place and the other around 4320 SW 1st Avenue.

Both city records identify a water main break affecting drinking water. Neither carries a rescission date, so both notices are active.

They bring the city total to five open areas. The earlier notices cover areas around 4612 SW 3rd Avenue, 405 SE 30th Terrace and 608 SE 1st Avenue.

The timing records conflict

The city logged the Santa Barbara Place area at 6.43 a.m. Tuesday and the SW 1st Avenue area at 6.52 a.m. Tuesday. Its separate interruption timestamps point to almost the same minutes on Monday, but its hour fields say 3 p.m. for Santa Barbara Place and 8 p.m. for SW 1st Avenue.

Those entries cannot all describe the same moment. The city has not published an explanation, so there is no reliable basis to state when either interruption began.

What residents should do

Bring tap water to a rolling boil for one minute before drinking it, cooking with it, making ice, preparing drinks or baby bottles, rinsing food, brushing teeth or washing dishes. Bottled water is an alternative.

Cape Coral says the precaution mainly applies to water that is swallowed. Showering and laundry are not restricted.

The city publishes mapped boundaries rather than a street list or household count. Anyone near one of the five addresses should check the city map rather than assume that an entire street is covered.

The notices stay in place until repeated bacteriological samples produce two consecutive days of clear results from the Lee County Health Department lab. No rescission or repair time has been posted for any of the five areas.