Water main break floods streets, swamps cars, damages homes in North Philadelphia near Temple University campus

A large water main broke, gushing out 4 million gallons of water into city streets, creating a muddy mess for North Philadelphia residents near Temple University’s campus on Friday.

Chopper 3 was over the water main break at North 9th and West Berks streets shortly after 10 a.m., where crews worked to stop the flow, which took about two hours, officials said. Emergency response crews even used what appeared to be an inflatable raft to navigate the substantially flooded streets Friday morning.

CBS News Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Water Department said the water main is 30 inches wide, and the break was first reported at 8:45 a.m. The department said it was one of the largest breaks they’ve had in a while.

Officials said the water main is from 1879, and when it broke, gallons of water leaked out, flooding city streets. The water main break is just around the block — .2 miles away — from Temple University’s Kardon Atlantic Apartments.

CBS News Philadelphia

A giant hole was cracked in the ground at the intersection of North 9th Street and Montgomery Avenue. When the main broke, it caused part of the street above it to collapse, damaging a parked car owned by a Temple University chemistry student, Brian Rafferty.

Rafferty said he was getting ready for chemistry class when police called him and said his car was in a watery hole. 

“It was, you know, heartbreaking to see, ’cause you know the guys were telling me that it’s probably going to be totaled,” he said. 

While the cause of the break is still unknown, Philadelphia’s aging infrastructure has been a challenge for the system. 

“We have about 7,000 miles of water mains and sewers altogether, and that is a system that has been built over the course of 200 years, so we are continually replacing those pipes,” Brian Rademaekers, a spokesperson for PWD, said.

CBS News Philadelphia

No one lost water service, but landlord Boris Keisserman said the basement of his rental property flooded. 

“Oh, it’s awful. It’s green. Dark green, it’s like I said about 4 feet of the water down there,” he said. “This is a new construction house which I just finished a few months ago. No one lived there. Thank God. I was about to rent it out.”

The city said it plans to reimburse residents whose basements were flooded. 

Once crews finish repairing the main, the Streets Department will begin fixing the road, a process expected to take several days.