A water main erupted on Friday morning after street repair crews accidentally broke a valve that sent jets of water flowing downhill on 20th Street, rerouting traffic on Dolores Street for hours.
Just one street over, a car crash that sent a man to the hospital in life-threatening condition also closed down traffic on Guerrero Street for the better part of the morning.
“It was one of our crews doing basic street repair work at the intersection,” said Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works. The crew “accidentally broke off a blow-off valve” at 9 a.m., Gordon said, resulting in the jet of water spilling onto the street.
By 10:30 p.m., the water main had been shut off and crews were attempting to fix the leak and continue with their street repairs.
Broken water pipe at Dolores and 20th. SF public works on site searching for shut off valve. @MLNow pic.twitter.com/7PbBctXD8a
— Andrew L Rogers (@andrewlrogers) May 13, 2016
Video courtesy of Andrew Rogers.
The pipe leak comes the same week as two sinkholes opened up in different parts of the city, causing some traffic delays downtown and in the Tenderloin. Gordon said the water main burst on Dolores Street was unrelated.
“This one, I don’t think it’s related,” Gordon said. The water main broke because heavy machinery hit it accidentally, not because it was an old pipe as with the sinkholes, Gordon said, adding that the other incidents involved sewage lines not water lines.
The street repair was likely to be delayed, though Gordon could not say by how long. She said the delay was likely not too long because crews had already been digging into the street and did not involve “a big, unanticipated street collapse,” as in the other incidents this week.