48-inch main bursts in Nicetown, floods shopping center

A 48-inch water main ruptured Thursday afternoon in the city's Nicetown section, flooding a shopping center and forcing the evacuation of customers.

The main failed shortly before 3 p.m. in the area in front of Bakers Centre shopping complex at Fox Street and Roberts Avenue, said John DiGiulio of the Philadelphia Water Department.

It took about two hours for crews to shut off the valve feeding the main, but by then much of the shopping center and nearby streets had been flooded.

Officials at the scene said it was too early to determine what caused the break, the city's second massive water-main failure in five days.

But the damage was apparent: At least seven stores were flooded, a handful of cars were stranded in the parking lot, and a section of nearby railroad tracks was underwater hours later.

Outside the ShopRite supermarket, where water levels reached a pile of potting-soil bags that employees had used as makeshift sandbags, shoppers waited for the waters to recede so they could return home.

Caroline Mallory said she was inside the ShopRite, her shopping cart loaded with crab cakes and cherries, when a voice over the store's loudspeaker told customers to evacuate. She walked outside to see her car partially submerged in the parking lot.

"It was muddy, muddy, muddy, and high," she said.

A Water Department worker waded to her car and assured her the interior was dry. Hours after the water main broke, Mallory was still waiting outside the ShopRite, keeping an eye on her car, several feet away.

A firefighter had offered to push her across in a shopping cart, but she was worried about what might be in the water.

"Chemicals," she said, wrinkling her nose.

About 100 people were evacuated from stores, two in an inflatable life raft carried by Engine 72, Fire Chief John Healy said.

In the state liquor store two shops down from the ShopRite, employees saw water coming through the front door and hightailed it out the back. The entire store was flooded within 15 minutes, they said.

"Bottles everywhere," one said.

They, too, waited outside the ShopRite with soaked pants legs for the water to recede.

An employee at the Wendy's restaurant on Fox said other businesses in Bakers Centre, including a Ross outlet and a Dollar Plus store, were also evacuated.

At one point, police were escorting customers across the flooded parking lot, with some officers carrying children on piggyback.

"It's really, really bad," the Wendy's employee said.

The Wendy's, on the opposite end of the shopping center, remained open.

DiGiulio said water from the break flowed at a rate of 100 million gallons per day - in other words, if it had flowed unencumbered for 24 hours, 100 million gallons would have been lost.

Early estimates were that more than eight million gallons of water escaped.

Preliminary information indicates that the water main was built in 1895, DiGiulio said.

Thursday's event was the second time in less than two years that Bakers Centre was damaged by a broken main. On Jan. 11, 2014, 13 million gallons of water spilled into the shopping center, causing damage estimated in the millions of dollars.

DiGiulio said there were four transmission mains in the area of Bakers Centre. The one that ruptured Thursday was not the one that failed in 2014.

Thursday's break came just days after a 36-inch cast-iron water main under the 500 block of North 52d Street in West Philadelphia burst Sunday, sending 10 million gallons rushing down neighborhood streets. About 40 homes and dozens of vehicles were damaged.

By 5:45 p.m. Thursday, Bakers Centre's parking lot was largely clear, with Water Department workers using a dump truck and a bulldozer to clear mud from areas with the worst flooding.

By 6, most of the water had drained from the stores and owners were allowed back in to assess damage.

Dot Stratz, general manager of the Got the Look clothing store, which sits at the lowest point in the strip mall, said she got a call from an employee about 2:30 that water was seeping into the store. She drove over.

"I felt sick to my stomach," she said, when she arrived and saw the parking lot.

Stratz remembered the 2014 break, which came shortly after her store opened. Then, the store had been new, not even fully stocked with merchandise. This time, it had up to $30,000 worth of clothes, shoes, and accessories.

"It's years of work, and it was just picking up," she said. "Now it's like starting fresh."