Downtown LA High-Rise Flooded By Broken Water Pipe Is Yellow-Tagged
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A broken pipe sent water cascading down 25 floors of a downtown Los Angeles high-rise forcing resident to evacuate on Monday.
The 27-story building in the 700 block of Olympic Boulevard has since been yellow-tagged and firefighters say it may be at least two days before residents will be allowed to return home.
Before evacuating, some of the residents filled bags with laptops, passports, wallets, pictures and other personal property.
"Look at my hallway! This is absolutely maddening guys. Look at my hallway," Daniel Fernandez, a resident, said in cellphone video shot moments before he evacuated. "Like literally, this is like, this is crazy."
Fernandez, who lives on the 11th floor, says alarms went off about 1 p.m. Firefighters said a water pipe broke on the 25th floor sending water gushing down to the first floor.
"It was scary. It was like horror movie status," Fernandez told CBS2's Andrea Fujii.
Firefighters were initially called to the building to repair broken sprinklers. While they were doing so, a pipe burst on the 25th floor, sending water gushing down.
They say each floor has up to 1 ½ inch of water. There are 151 units inside the building. All of the residents were evacuated with no injuries.
"I was really nervous," Ty Johnson, a resident, said. "In fact, it took me awhile to stop shaking. And I took a bag and I started going down and it was really wet going down the stairs and slippery and all of that. It was an adventure."
Residents were led up to their units floor-by-floor in order to grab their personal belongings.
"The floors are kinda damaged and it even got into my carpet. It literally flooded my whole living room," said one resident.
Residents say it's not clear at this point if the property management company will compensate them for the nights they spend in a hotel. The company told CBS2 they will be working individually with residents based on what they need.
