A burst water main beneath an abandoned South Campus apartment building washed hundreds of gallons of water and dozens of area residents out onto Park Drive just before midnight last night.
As of 12:45 a.m., the flooding threatened to force the evacuation of ‘as many as a hundred’ residents from about ten buildings in the neighborhood surrounding the fractured main under 459 Park Dr., many of them Boston University students, according Boston Fire Department officials and residents on the scene. BU does not own the buildings, according to residents.
The main probably broke because of the cold, according BFD officials.
‘It’s very close to the electrical circuits, and that’s our main concern,’ said BFD District 5 Commander Edmund G. Maiorana.
Fire department officials evacuated the buildings.
‘I was in the shower and they banged on the door and told us we were leaving,’ said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Elizabeth. Cobb, who lives in the basement of 465 Park Dr., two buildings north of the broken main.
‘It’s not that deep it’s only like a few inches, but it’s slowly coming toward our door,’ she said. ‘We kind of tossed everything into the loft, but we can’t get our DSL cables off the floor, so we hope those won’t be ruined.’
Cobb said she was going to have to stay at her boyfriend’s house 45 minutes away.
College of Engineering freshman Achillefs Mourtzouchos said the majority of the residents of 465 Park Dr. are BU students.
Bags of trash floated through the alley between 465 Park Dr. and 879 Beacon St. while the tide threatened to submerge six cars behind the buildings. Dozens of firefighters and Boston Sewer Department workers struggled to dam the flow.
‘I’m sure we’ll do the best we can to find them places off the street,’ said a Boston University police officer on the scene who declined to give his name. He did not know if BU would house the students if they were evacuated.
An MBTA bus was on the scene to transport the potential evacuees, but the driver did not know where they would be taken.
Maiorana said the residents would have to be evacuated if they couldn’t staunch the flow.
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