Mop-Up Begins in Wake of Torrent : Flooding: The rupture of a water main damages a dozen businesses on trendy Ventura Boulevard. Apartment garages turn into underground lakes.

In the aftermath of flooding from a major water main rupture, the area around Ventura Boulevard and Kester Avenue Saturday was a landscape of muddy stores, buckled sidewalks, fallen trees and flooded underground garages.

The rupture of a 36-inch, high-pressure water pipe Friday afternoon blasted open a 20-by-40-foot crater at the Sherman Oaks intersection, sending a torrent of 400,000 gallons of water rushing down four blocks before the line could be shut off.

There were no injuries and no loss of utility service to the area, officials said.

As city crews worked Saturday to repair the 30-year-old pipe, officials tallied the damage. At least 12 businesses on the trendy boulevard received minor water damage. At least 10 apartment garages on Willis and Natick avenues were turned into subterranean lakes, damaging numerous cars. A sewer line beneath the water main is believed to be leaking, but officials won’t know for sure until further excavation is finished. A section of Ventura Boulevard will be closed for days.

No buildings were structurally damaged in the earth-shaking rupture, officials said.

Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Debra Sass said officials have not yet estimated monetary damage but expect to release a figure on Monday.

The eastbound lanes of Ventura Boulevard near the scene will remain closed Monday, but the westbound lanes are likely to open for the morning commute, Sass said.

Workers expect to complete repair of the broken pipe early Sunday, officials said. But concrete chunks--some five feet wide--had not been removed Saturday, delaying inspection of other utility lines, including the sewer line, said Bob Simmons, a DWP senior engineer.

The cause of the rupture had not been determined, Simmons said.

The break occurred near the juncture of the 36-inch connector pipe, which feeds the Stone Canyon and Franklin Canyon reservoirs to the south, and a 60-inch “trunk” pipe, which funnels water from the Los Angeles Reservoir Complex in Sylmar, officials said.

After surveying the area Saturday morning, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said the city would work quickly to repair the damage and reimburse residents and businesses.

“Our main objective is to get Ventura Boulevard back to normalcy as soon as possible,” he said.

Throughout the four-block strip, merchants and workers mopped floors and put carpets on the sidewalk to dry.

Haig Konjoyan, landlord of an office building across the street from the rupture, said the carpet was ruined.

“We had two feet of water 130 feet back into the building,” he said.

About a block away, Mike Govorko walked past dazed neighbors and yellow city trucks pumping water out of flooded apartment garages along the 4600 block of Willis Avenue. He described the surreal scene of the previous afternoon.

“I was watching television,” he said. “I heard a lot of noise and I went to the window. The tree had fallen down, and I saw the river coming down the street. It had to be 2 1/2 feet high, and it was coming fast.”

Govorko’s Cadillac and Oldsmobile were among scores of cars that were left muddy and marooned.

“The lights were on in the Olds, and I hadn’t touched it,” he said. “I assume that means I have an electric problem.”

Another notable casualty was Fred Silver’s 1976 Rolls-Royce. He found the blue-and-white luxury car, which he said is worth about $150,000, filled with water in the garage of his apartment house on Natick.

“It was up to the windows,” Silver said. “I had leather upholstery, and sheep wool over that. And I just had it painted.”