Burst water main floods road near Washington, stranding motorists

This, Marcia Espinola thought, must be what a tsunami is like.

One minute, the road was as dry as the 17-degree air outside. The next, a wall of water carrying rocks and branches rushed toward her, crashing over the roof of her Honda CR-V.

Trapped, Espinola thought about trying to wade to safety, she recalled. But what if the water swept her away? She doesn’t know how to swim.

“I don’t want to die here,” she prayed. “My husband needs me.”

Water gushed up around her SUV on Tuesday morning after a 66-inch water main burst just outside the Capital Beltway. It rose above the bottom of the windows. Ice formed on her windshield. The heater cut off. She prayed so much that her throat went dry, she said.

Minutes ticked by, and Espinola, 56, could see people gathering on the side of River Road near Potomac, Md., outside Washington.

She tried to scrawl her husband’s phone number on the back of a gym schedule and hold it to the window. The pen was frozen. She rubbed it between her palms to get it to work.

“There were boulders coming down the road the size of laundry baskets,” said Lt. Bill Phelps, a Montgomery County firefighter. “It felt like white-water rapids.”

The water itself was less than 2 feet deep, but it moved so fast that it rose up around the cars in its path -- Espinola’s and half a dozen others.

More than an hour after Espinola’s ordeal began, firefighters guided a 14-foot metal boat toward her, using ropes secured to a firetruck and held by rescuers at the edge of the torrent. A firefighter opened the car door, helped Espinola aboard and took her to safety.

Another motorist was rescued by the boat. Three others climbed into a basket lowered 120 feet from a helicopter, and four were taken away by rescue workers in large trucks who were able to get close enough. No one was seriously injured.

The pipe burst along a hilly section of the road, turning the downhill section into a river. At its height, the break spewed 150,000 gallons a minute onto the road.

The water main burst just before 8 a.m., and dispatchers began fielding 911 calls from stranded motorists moments later.

“I have a child in the car! I don’t want the car to wash away!” one woman told a dispatcher. “Hurry up -- I’m so scared.”

On a recording of the call, she can be heard consoling her 9-year-old: “It’s OK, sweetie. Don’t worry, my darling.”

Another woman pleaded for help as water poured into her black Honda Accord, reaching her knees. As the dispatcher instructed her to get as much of her body out of the frigid water as possible, the woman began screaming that her car was moving.

“No, no, please!” she yelled. “I’m going down!”

At the time, three firefighters happened to be heading up the road in a fire engine, on their way to withdraw money from an ATM for the night’s dinner fund.

They saw what appeared to be smoke. Thinking there might be a car fire or toxic spill, they began pulling on their gear. They arrived to find motorists stranded and water gushing.

“The road literally exploded, and a glacier of water started pouring over cars,” said one of the three, Anthony Bell, a 22-year veteran who was driving.

Bell pulled the engine closer to the stranded vehicles. Phelps changed into a dry suit and grabbed a pike pole, similar to a tall walking stick, to help determine where pavement may have washed out in front of him as he waded into the raging water.

To Espinola, rescue was an answer to her prayers -- to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, St. Anthony, more saints, her late relatives.

“Please don’t take me too soon, Mother,” she remembers praying. “I want to see you, but not yet.”