Ingraham Street turned into the Ingraham River as a 16-inch water main broke Thursday, Oct. 4, snarling traffic around SeaWorld Drive, West Mission Bay Drive, Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Interstate 8 for hours.
When city crews shut the water off for repairs, it caused a water pressure surge that caused a second six-inch water line break along two blocks of Garnet Avenue, according to water department spokesman Arian Collins.
The two breaks spilled approximately 6 million gallons of water, most of which emptied into storm drains, Collins said.
“SeaWorld, the Dana and Hyatt Islandia, they were out of water on Thursday until about 7 or 8 p.m.,” Collins said. “We were able to reroute the water to put them back in service. On Garnet Avenue, the 1100 and 1200 blocks were out of water until about 2 a.m.”
Collins said the cause of the Ingraham Street break was due to the age of the large cast-iron pipe.
“It was just an old pipe. That one I think was more than 50 years old,” he said.
Ingraham was closed for approximately 28 hours as repair crews replaced a large section of the broken pipe with PVC pipe. By 6:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5, West Mission Bay Drive and Ingraham Street were completely reopened for traffic.
“As far as the pipeline, we’re done with that job,” Collins said. “That whole pipeline will probably be replaced in the future, but there’s not more work needed perhaps other than some [street] patching.