Water main break causes early morning flood in East Vancouver

A water main break in the 800-block of Lakewood Drive sent torrents of muddy water flooding onto a main bike route and into the Templeton Secondary School sports field Friday morning.

According to a nearby resident, a small leak which was was reported to the City of Vancouver on May 4, exploded into a major gusher this morning.

The water was eventually turned off, but not before it washed out some of the Lakewood Drive roadbed, leaving rocks and mud on top of sunken asphalt, and flooding at least one nearby basement.  As well, a large cherry tree on a boulevard lost much of the dirt around its root system and was later removed by city staff.

Vancouver's director of water and sewer told CBC that it usually takes two weeks for the crews to respond to reports of water main leaks. 

"We send somebody immediately to assess the damage," said Daniel Roberge. "To properly repair these we need to  prepare an engineering package that we can give to our construction crews [and] we need to get materials ahead of time to make sure we do the job safely."

Roberge said the eight-inch pipe that burst was installed in 1962.

"We have 1,500 kilometres of pipes throughout the city and some were installed over 100 years ago. So we do have a renewal program to replace the pipes, but occasionally some of them will rupture due to soil conditions," he said.