SAUGUS — A water main leak on Vine Street flooded the basements of two surrounding homes Monday morning, blocking off half of the street from Highland Avenue to Adams Avenue.
At approximately 8:30 a.m., a car swerved and collided with a fire hydrant setting off the leak, according to Deputy Fire Chief Tom D’eon.
“He hit the hydrant, knocked it out, and then we had a pretty serious leak,” said D’eon.
Officers on scene did not identify the driver, but said that he did not sustain any serious injuries and his car was towed at the scene.
Chris Coco, who works for the Department of Public Works in Saugus and was on scene cleaning up, said that he was unsure of what caused the car to crash but would assume it had something to do with the slippery conditions from Sunday’s snowstorm.
The leak caused a ten-by-ten sinkhole to form by the hydrant.
“When the pipe got sheared off underground there’s such a high volume of water it easily undermines the soil and causes a sinkhole,” said D’Leo. “That’s typical.”
The Saugus Fire Department, National Grid, Saugus DPW, and Agganis Construction worked to stop the leak and clean up the area.
Saugus Fire Capt. Tom Kaminski said that “fire hydrants are normally designed to snap off clean and take an impact, but this one snapped off low so we had free flowing water. The water main was compromised and flooded into the basement of two houses.”
The leak undermined a tree which was endangering one of the houses, so the tree was cut down.
The area was surrounded by mud and Capt. Kaminski said, “it was a lake out here earlier.”
The main has been shut down, and by Monday afternoon, workers were still trying to remove the water so that the necessary repairs could be performed.
“It’s a multi-hour operation,” said D’eon, “factoring in the weather and freezing temperatures tonight.”
A neighbor, who refused to give her name, said that she had seen trucks coming in and out all morning, but did not actually hear the crash. She said she did not know what was going on but saw that water was spewing into the street at one point when she was outside shoveling.
A Saugus police officer who was on scene said early Monday afternoon that the leak seemed to be controlled but that police planned to deter traffic for a few more hours while they worked on cleaning up the scene and repairing the main.
