Water main break floods part of South End, leaves car stuck in sinkhole

BOSTON - A massive water main break in the South End left a street full of damage early Monday morning.

Water poured down Northampton Street and Massachusetts Avenue around 3:45 a.m. flooding several blocks and buckling the pavement. Crews were able to shut the water off, but one car ended up stuck in a sinkhole on Northampton Street and some nearby homes were flooded.

"When I got off the sofa it was just nothing but water everywhere," said Stephany Perez. She was home with her six kids when her apartment started taking on water. 

"It's pretty scary, I wasn't expecting a whole bunch of water. I wasn't aware of anything that was going on outside," Perez said. 

The pavement underneath Sarah Donner's Subaru bundled, leaving it stuck in a gaping hole. Hours later, it was towed. 

"I realized there's an emergency down here and I'm like 'wait, where am I parked?'" Donner said. "Obviously not what you would expect to see, I was kind of really surprised but also, what can you do?" 

It took crews about 35 minutes to turn the water off.   

This is the second water main break in the city in three days.  

"We have about 30 to 40 breaks a year. That is well above the national standard for this region, but we take any break seriously and we're certainly working hard on trying to get the repairs done as quickly as possible," Dolores Randolph of Boston Water and Sewer told WBZ-TV.

The broken pipe dates back to 1872. Work had been done on it back in the 1970's.

Repairs could take a few days because there was damage to some of the other utilities as well.