'The Water Was Coming Up Fast': Major Water Main Break Sends Denver Residents Scrambling

DENVER (CBS4) - A water main break in northwest Denver submerged cars and sent residents into the streets near 45th Avenue and Perry Street. The flooding stretched across eight blocks.

Stacy Bramer lives in the area. She says with the warm dry and windy weather she was prepared for a disaster, but not this type.

"If anything, I was worried about a fire," she said.

Early Sunday morning, her neighbor showed up at her northwest Denver home to tell her she thought Bramer had water leaking from her house.

"My heart was pumping. I hadn't eaten anything and drank anything. I literally just got woken up by loud knocks at my door," she said.

Her basement was flooding so she started getting her belongings out. It wasn't until she looked out her backdoor and saw a lake forming in her yard when she realized this wasn't just a little leak.

"The water was coming up fast, and I was panicking," she said.

Turns out a major 24-inch water main broke, and Denver Water says that is one of their bigger lines.

"Think about it like a highway. You got big highways that move a lot of cars to different neighborhoods. Well, we got big pipes that move a lot of water to different neighborhoods," said Denver Water Spokesperson Travis Thompson.

It took Denver Water crews a while to shut the water off, and all the while it just kept flowing onto the street and into homes. They finally stopped the flow at around 11 a.m.

"Our crews are ready to go so we can get it fixed as quickly as possible," said Thompson.

Denver Water doesn't know what caused the break yet, but this was a very old pipe.

"This pipe looks like it was installed in the 1920s, so it is older piece of infrastructure," said Thompson.

That doesn't surprise Bramer, she knows the pipes in her neighborhood might need to be replaced.

"My first thought was like, 'I bet this was old and it was about ready to give.' So yeah, it probably needed to be fixed," said Bramer.

She is staying with a neighbor for the time being and just hopes she was able to get all her important things out of her basement before it flooded, and she had to leave her home.

"I was like I don't want to die from drowning just trying to get my stuff out of the basement," she said.

Denver Water admits it may take a long time to get the water main repaired. In the meantime, they are making sure people have water, and they have restoration experts in the area to take a look at people's homes.