A water main break at 38th Street and Woodland Avenue early yesterday morning caused traffic mayhem and left residents of Ware and Goldberg college houses without water as of late last night.
At around 6:30 a.m. yesterday, a 16-inch cast-iron water pipe broke at the north side of Woodland Avenue, bordering the Veterinary School of Medicine, according to Penn Facilities Manager Christopher Phillips. Southbound traffic on 38th Street was detoured until 10 a.m.
The upper Quad was still without water last night, although the Philadelphia Water Department expected to have service restored by 11 p.m., according to Penn Central Services Director Michael Coleman. Students were left scrambling to make do.
"I'm looking for somewhere to take a shower tonight," said College freshman and Ware College House resident Marcia Gonzalez. She added that "the toilets don't flush, but people don't seem to mind."
Affected students were advised to use gym locker rooms to shower.
Occupants in other dorms were impacted as well. Water service had been cut off to Hamilton Village, but it was restored by mid-morning, according to Penn facilities service director James Bean.
Even that was not soon enough for College sophomore Robbie Chan, a Harrison College House resident.
"I just woke up and there wasn't any water, so I went to class stinky dirty," Chan said, who added that, when water service came back on, the water was brown.
Officials at the nearby Vet School and the Veterans Administration Hospital reported no water problems.
Due to the volume of water, a pool several feet deep developed at the intersection of 38th Street and Civic Center Boulevard, trapping two trucks. Although the water reached up to the bottom of the trucks' windows, a Philadelphia Police Department officer on the scene said that the occupants of both vehicles had exited safely.
The stranded trucks were cleared by around 12:30 p.m., according to Philadelphia Water Department Supervisor Michael Sullivan.
Sullivan said that the blowout occurred in a section that was less than 50 years old. He said that until a laboratory analysis is completed on the damaged section in about a week, it will be impossible to know precisely what caused the crack to occur.
However, he speculated that since the pipe had been placed directly on top of the underground concrete vault that carries SEPTA's Subway-Surface line, vibration from the trolleys might have induced a stress fracture.
Other damage occurred when several inches of water leaked into the trolley tunnel, disrupting trolley service on lines 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36 starting at around 7:45 a.m., according to SEPTA spokesman James Whitaker.
Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Chief Matthew McCrory said that service had also been halted due to a "hydrocarbon smell" in the tunnel. McCrory said that small amounts of gasoline had leached into the vault from abandoned underground gasoline tanks, but he added that it was never an explosion hazard.
SEPTA trolley service west of 40th Street was provided by the Market-Frankford Elevated Line until noon, when the Subway-Surface lines were placed back into operation, according to Whitaker.
Sullivan said that final work on the pipe replacement would be completed today, followed by a partial re-opening of the westbound lanes of Woodland Avenue. Due to extensive street and sidewalk damage, he does not expect the road to be fully re-opened until Thursday.
Crews were working late last night to fix the pipe.
Not all were caught off-guard by the water main break.
"It's Philadelphia -- it's what you normally expect," said medical student Paras Lakhani.
