Main break floods road, leaves homes without water
Crews worked Monday to repair an early-morning water main break that flooded Victoria Street and left a small cluster of Costa Mesa residents without water.
A pipe split under Victoria Street between American and Placentia avenues about 1 a.m., a Mesa Water District official said.
Police shut down the thoroughfare’s eastbound lanes until workers could turn off the water.
“We did have a full crew out there by 2 a.m.,” Mesa Water spokeswoman Noelle Collins said Monday afternoon. “They’ve been working on it since then.”
The break left about four houses in the area and an apartment building at 989 Victoria St. without water, but nearby Victoria Elementary School still had service, according to the water district.
Collins said workers were able restore water to the apartment building from another line but had to shut it off temporarily when they replaced the broken pipe.
The water district also made bottled water available to the homes lacking service, she said.
Crews initially didn’t know what caused the line to split. “It was put in in ‘91, so it’s not an old pipe,” Collins said Monday.
But engineers determined that natural soil settlement put pressure on the pipe, causing it to split, she said Tuesday.
Crews replaced the section of broken pipe and restored all service by 6 p.m. Monday.
Only one eastbound lane of Victoria Avenue remained closed by rush hour Monday morning after most of the flooding had cleared, according to Collins.
“There’s kind of a little steady flow in the gutter, but it’s not anything big,” she said.
Costa Mesa police were at Victoria Elementary’s campus Monday to help manage traffic at the beginning and end of the school day, Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokeswoman Laura Boss said.
The lane will likely remain closed until at least Thursday while crews continue working, Collins said.
“Today what they’re doing is they’re putting a concrete bridge around it to protect the water main so that it doesn’t happen again,” she said Tuesday.