Broken water main cracks open and floods Burbank street
A ruptured pipe sent water gushing onto a Burbank street Sunday evening, lifting up chunks of the road and temporarily flooding the area.
The flooding occurred sometime around 8 p.m. when a water main located beneath the intersection of Magnolia Boulevard and First Street ruptured.
“There was a crack in one of the water mains, about an 8-foot crack to a section of pipe,” said Joe Flores, a spokesman for Burbank Water and Power.
The ruptured pipe sent hundreds of gallons of water onto the street, but Burbank Water and Power customers were unaffected by the incident.
Flores said pipes like the one that broke are in “the neighborhood of 60 years old” but are designed to last a lot longer and that the water main suffered a “premature rupture.”
He said the broken pipe will be removed and replaced with a new section.
Flores added that Burbank Water and Power is looking into how the rupture occurred in the first place.
A pipe can rupture if it’s not properly supported underneath or if there’s too much weight on top of it, he said.
“Just some kind of pressure placed on the pipe can stress it,” Flores said. “That may not be the case that happened here, but that’s one possibility.”
Twitter: @Andy_Truc
