PROVO — Christine McCarthy woke up around 3 a.m. Monday to a neighbor knocking on her door, telling her to save her van that was parked in front of her house from the water flowing down the street.
"It looked like old faithful," said McCarthy, pointing to the 4-foot-deep crater in the middle of the Provo intersection at 600 West and 300 South where a water line burst. "It was bubbling up."
Around 2:30 a.m. Monday, a plug dislodged from a 20-inch water pipe cross fitting, causing water to gush out of the pipe and flood the nearby streets, sidewalks and lawns. It also created about a 25-foot-wide crater in the middle of the road.
Public officials said around 30 homes were without water at some point Monday morning, including an elementary school. But by the afternoon, only the houses between Center Street and 300 South were without water, said Brad Jorgensen, water resources assistant director for Provo. Jorgensen said the line was fixed about 4:30 p.m.
Tawn Henrie's house is on the corner nearest the rupture. And while the water came almost to the top of her first step, she said her husband, three kids and her slept through all of the commotion. She woke up about 6 a.m. to go jogging and found out the water was not on when she went to brush her teeth. Then she looked out her front window.
"It looked like an asteroid hit the middle of the street," she said.
Henrie, who has lived in her Provo home now for two years, said she later saw photos of how her house appeared overnight.
"Our house looked like it was sitting on a nice peaceful lake," Henrie said.
She dressed her kindergartner and third grader in galoshes to make it across the street to their elementary school around 8:30 a.m. "It was slick, but we were careful," she said.
Henrie said the city was prompt and helpful throughout the ordeal and the Provo mayor even came around to apologize for the inconvenience.
Like Henrie's, most homes suffered little damage because they do not have basements. Helen Anderson, spokeswoman for Provo City, said three basement apartment buildings were flooded as was another basement in a home. Only one person had asked for hotel accommodations as of Monday afternoon, she said.
City officials expected the road to be repaired on Tuesday.
Jorgensen said that about 35 years ago that segment of line was abandoned and the plug was put in place. "That was the plug that came dislodged and that is where the repair had to be made," he said. The pipe it feeds into is about 60 years old but is still in "great shape," he said.
"This is not an older line with problems."
But talking on a large scale about where their systems may be vulnerable was something cities were not willing to do because of anti-terrorism regulations that were put into place after 9/11.
Public utility officials in Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake County say that managing leaks and responding to line failures is an ongoing part of their job. The age of underground water lines is not the only factor used to determine the likelihood a water line will fail. Corrosive soils, freeze-thaw cycles and other shifts in the earth take their toll on water lines.
"These leaks are usually unexpected and we typically can't plan for them or predict them," said Craig Frisbee, Ogden's public utilities manager. Ogden is at the tail end of a four-year, $48 million project to upgrade aging water and sewer infrastructure.
"But that leak in Provo sounds like a pretty routine leak. Every city has routine leaks on their water lines," he said.
Whether a water line failure is a result of aging infrastructure, a problem in many parts of the country, or external factors "is just routine stuff we deal with every day," he said.
Provo public works director Merrill Bingham said much of the 20-inch water line upstream of Monday's failure has been replaced in the past 10 to 15 years. Part of the line where the failure occurred is 80 years old, but is in almost pristine condition.
"It's probably in as good a shape as when it was new, which is remarkable because it's 80 years old," he said.
Bingham said Provo will spend $200,000 to $600,000 each year replacing underground water lines. Officials decide what lines need to be replaced based on the number of small leaks or failures in a section of water line, and on information from high-tech portable sensors that detect small leaks.
And while the city has a pretty good idea how old individual water lines are, there is no inventory of fittings along the lines — like the lead plug that failed Monday morning — to clue utilities managers in to potential failures.
Richard Bay, general manager of the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District in Salt Lake County, said urban growth prompts the replacement of pipes before they wear out because an increased demand on the water system requires upgrades — bigger pipes. He said most of the 280 miles of pipeline in the conservancy district's system has been in the ground less than 50 years.
"Most are between 10 and 50 years old," he said. "The biggest danger to the life of our pipes is corrosion. Corrosion situations vary widely depending on what soils and what moisture and groundwater conditions exist."
Back in Provo, though, McCarthy said she was just happy that not a lot of damage was done.
She has tenants renting out her basement who said they were all praying that the water would not make it there.
"I was so scared," McCarthy recalled, adding that she is planning on replacing her dirt driveway with a concrete one in the spring.
She spent several hours with a hose, shovel and broom, cleaning up the mud in front of her home and the building beside her on Monday.
"I don't mind helping clean up," McCarthy said. "It's a mess. I am just grateful my house didn't flood."
e-mail: slenz@desnews.com; sfidel@desnews.com