Broken water main floods Montreal, affecting thousands and prompting boil water advisory

Nearly 150,000 Montreal homes were put under a boil water advisory on Friday after a broken water main erupted into a “geyser” that transformed streets into streams, paralyzed traffic and forced people to evacuate from flooded buildings.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said many residents east of downtown woke up around 6 a.m. to firefighters urging them to get out of their homes because of flooding risks from the underground water main that broke near the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

Witnesses said that at its peak, a “wall of water” 10 meters high had burst through the ground, flooding the densely populated neighborhood. Residents donned rubber boots and waded through the water that streamed down the streets and puddled in intersections during the approximately five and a half hours it took to fully stem the flow.

By 11:45 a.m. the situation was “under control,” Plante said, and the city’s director of water services said workers had managed to close a valve so the pressure in the water main was dropping. However, the city issued a boil-water advisory that covered a large swath of the northeastern part of the island.

The source of the flooding was a pipe more than two meters in diameter installed in 1985, officials said.

Lyman Zhu said he woke up to what sounded like “heavy rain” and when he looked out his window saw a “wall of water” that was about 10 meters high and the width of the street. “It was insane,” he said.

Maxime Carignan Chagnon said the “giant wall of water” gushed for about two hours. The rushing water was “very, very strong,” he said, splashing as it crashed against lamp posts and trees. “It was truly impressive.”

He said about 2 feet of water collected in his basement.

“I heard some people had much, much more,” he noted.