It was a routine delivery for the driver of an 18-wheeler with a trailer full of Amazon packages as he drove down the 2700 block of Sports Arena Boulevard Monday afternoon when he realized his destination, an Amazon Prime facility, was on the other side of the street.
According to a San Diego Police officer, the driver decided to make a U-turn just 200 feet from the freight center.
He backed up the lengthy rig carefully until he felt a sudden jolt. His trip was suddenly anything but routine as he had knocked a fire hydrant from its base, sending a roaring torrent of water into the air enveloping electrical connections on an adjacent telephone pole.
The alarm went out to San Diego Fire-Rescue and San Diego Police at 3:29 p.m. But before they arrived the story took another strange twist.
An apparently thrifty motorist driving by the geyser in an older red Honda decided his car needed a wash and thought he could save a few dollars by driving under the tower of water now running down the street and threatening businesses.
Unfortunately, the shoulder of the road surrounding the hydrant is dirt, and the driver quickly became mired in muddy soil with hundreds of gallons of water per minute pounding on his car. 
Witnesses assisted the man from his car as it began to fill with water. Instead of a free wash, the driver’s car may be a total loss – albeit a clean total loss.
City workers stemmed the flow of water after about 30 minutes.
The big rig’s driver provided information to officers and was allowed to proceed down the street where he backed the long trailer into the Amazon terminal, very carefully.