Residents Waterlogged After Main Breaks
Cheryl Burkett and Robert Collins didn’t plan on having a lake in their back yard, but Sunday night, they got one.
The couple, who live in the 1600 block of South Grand Boulevard, looked in their yard just after 6 p.m.
They saw a lake. They saw their garbage cans floating by their porch. They saw the water rush over a bed of freshly planted tulip bulbs into their basement and into Burkett’s 1987 Mercury Cougar.
“It sounded like a waterfall under the house,” Collins said.
The water was the result of a broken water main directly in front of their house. Because of the break, water was shut off to homes on Grand between 16th and 17th avenues Sunday night.
Grand also was closed to traffic between 14th and 17th. Water crews expect the street to be closed part of today as they repair the street.
About a 3-foot section of the 12-inch cast-iron water main broke about 6 p.m.
“It just gave out,” a worker said.
Neighbors didn’t hear a thing. Burkett said she looked out front, only to see a fountain burbling out of the asphalt and water bubbling in cracks and holes.
“It looked like the street had exploded,” Burkett said.
After calls to the city, the water was turned off - but not before it had rolled down the South Hill, wetting Grand, Washington and Stevens all the way downtown.
Sunday evening, workers used shovels and machines to dig out the broken main. Chunks of asphalt and piles of rock surrounded a hole the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
City workers hoped to have the main fixed and water turned on by 5 a.m. today. There was no estimate when the street would be opened.
“I tell you, it’s all rock down there,” shouted the man running a backhoe as the machine scraped and skipped along the bottom of the hole.
The water flooded several basements, wetting several apartments on the block. Water reportedly rose up to a woman’s armpits in one basement on 16th Avenue.
Burkett and Collins didn’t store anything valuable in their basement - just boxes and pictures.
They were harder hit in their yard. Burkett pointed to her left hand as she recalled planting more than 100 tulips in the front yard.
“I still have the blisters,” she said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map of area