Large water main break floods San Francisco street, several homes

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Four homes were flooded with two to three feet of water on Monday morning after a water main break swamped a street in San Francisco's Sunnydale neighborhood, fire officials said.

The large water main break before 7 a.m. flooded the 200 block of Santos Street, between Velasco and Geneva avenues, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. The area is near McLaren Park and the Cow Palace.

Surveillance camera captured the first signs of water gushing out of a sidewalk on Santos Street in San Francisco at Monday morning. What happened next was unexpected.

"You could see the ground kind of like grasping for air, like kind of like breathing. And that's when we realized that it was pumping out of the ground," said Joseph Navas, San Francisco resident impacted by the floods.

Joseph Navas ran downstairs to find his mother's bedroom in the basement flooded.

"Sand, dirt, clay, all everything that's, you know, that's underneath from the concrete, all that got pushed up and they went to my house and my neighbor's house," said Navas.

The scene outside was worse. His car was surrounded by water and water was spreading into his neighbor's homes.

"I was barefooted at that time. I mean, it was something that, you know, we had to move quickly, so I had to drive my car barefooted, full of mud," said Navas.

The first on scene were San Francisco firefighters. At least 20 of them responded to four homes that had two to three feet of water.

"It is the garage areas that are affected. So right now, there's a lot of mud and sludge that are impacting people's homes. So, whatever they had on the ground is now impacted and potentially damaged," said Lt. Mariano Elias with the San Francisco Fire Department.

The culprit was a cast iron pipe that was installed in 1941. The city is telling us they were already planning to replace it before it ruptured.

The city agency responsible for these pipes is the Public Utilities Commission.

"Twenty-percent of our pipes in our 1,200-mile water pipe system are 100 years or older, and so we are working to replace them one mile at a time," said Nancy Crowley, spokesperson for the SF Public Utilities Commission.

According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, there are 100 to 200 water main breaks happening every year.

"Performed what is known as a choke down, which is they reduce the water pressure so that the water would not, which had started to flood some of the adjacent properties, basements would stop," said Crowley.

Residents were without water for about five hours. The PUC replaced the pipe and will work on paving the road. City staff showed up to assess the damage, urging residents to file claims within six months.

"I prefer more of a rooster crow than waking up to this, you know, slush and water main that just busted out," said Navas.

Bay City News contributed to this story.