Water Main Break Creates River Of Mud In Daly City Neighborhood
DALY CITY (CBS SF) -- Crews worked Tuesday evening on the finishing touches of cleanup after a water main break flooded a Daly City neighborhood with mud, a city water and wastewater resources spokesman said.
An 8-inch cast-iron pipe on Daly City's "Reservoir 3" ruptured at about 4:25 a.m. near Hillside Park sending 45,000 gallons of water downhill, director of water and wastewater resources Patrick Sweetland said.
The water flowed down the hill and onto Lausanne Avenue and affected four blocks, including Bonnie, East Moltke, Ford and Price streets and Clayton Court.
As of 4:30 p.m., Sweetland said crews were in the final acts of ridding the streets affected of the soil, and washing down the streets.
No homes were flooded, but streets were left covered in a layer of mud so thick it reached the top of parked cars' wheels.
Twelve homes were evacuated as a precaution, but no injuries were reported. By 11:30 a.m., all the residents had been allowed to return.
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"We did open up an evacuation center with the Red Cross there," Lucett said.
Evacuees were directed to the Teglia Community Center, but only one family with a baby had sought assistance at the site, North County Fire Authority spokesman Matt Lucett said.
Clayton Court resident Angel Vega, 83, was in his flip-flops late Tuesday morning, shoveling mud out of his driveway. He was also covered in mud.
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"I thought it was raining," Vega said of his reaction when the main broke. "It was much worse.
Another Clayton Court resident, 36-year-old Eric Reyes, said he woke up to the muddy mess at 6:30 a.m. He said was unable to get himself to work and his son to school because his car was stuck.
"No one has informed us of anything," said Reyes, who works in nursing at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. "We're getting all our information from reports on TV."
He said his family wasn't asked to evacuate and that his home still has water service.
"We're pretty much stuck here," he said.
Lucett said there was a shutoff valve between the water tank and the spot where the rupture occurred, which allowed crews to stop the water flow relatively quickly.
Cars were being towed out of the muddy area to facilitate cleanup efforts.
Trucks with front-end loaders consolidated the mud into a pile that was being hauled away bit by bit in dump trucks.
Sweetland said the trucks dumped the mud in two spots—the Brisbane Recycling Co. and an open city lot off of Geneva Avenue.
Engineers were also assessing the integrity of the park and Sweetland said crews will clean the park ahead of the anticipated rainstorms this week.
Water was not affected from the break and Sweetland said there should be no issues of muddy water from the flood.
(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
