Update: Small Flood Hits Two Homes, Besieges Fatapple's

A water main broke early this morning at Colusa Avenue and Sea View Drive, sending water gushing into parts of at least two homes and forcing to batten the door.

The water surge began before 8 a.m. when the 8-inch iron pipe ruptured from corrosion, said East Bay MUD repairmen on the scene.

The water filled the street with a small torrent that gushed into Fatapple's parking lot, one home on Colusa Avenue and another house behind it on Rockway Avenue, where the resident said the basement quickly filled with about 10 inches of water.

"It's been quite a morning," said Mindy Galoob, as she surveyed piles of her family's belongings, including damp books, hauled from the basement to the driveway, sidewalk and walkway to their front door.

Galoob, who rents the home on Rockway, said the Colusa Avenue home of her landlords, Fred and Mona Ayyad, fared worse. She said she understood that water went into their living room.

Attempts to reach the Ayyad family was unnsuccessful. No one answered the phone at the family-owned Fred's Market on University Avenue in Berkeley. An employee at the family-run Sam's Market on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley said Fred's was closed today because of an urgent problem that the family had to deal with.

A private clean-up firm that has a contract with East Bay MUD, Bay Restorators, was cleaning up the mess at Galoob's house and in an outdoor storage unit at Fatapple's.

Galoob's backyard also was flooded. "Our backyard is a mess," she said. "All the mulch and dirt went through."

At the restaurant itself, only a small amount of water seeped in under a door, said John Marks, a manager at the popular eatery.

"We were able to contain it quite well," he said. The restaurant, which opens at 7 a.m., remained open, he said.

Though water outside the restaurant was about eight inches deep at one point, only "a small pool" managed to leak inside, he said.

An East Bay MUD worker at the scene said water service was cut to only a couple of homes and was restored at about 12:30 p.m.

East Bay MUD spokesman Charles Hardy said the pipe was installed in 1937.

The pipe was buried three feet below the surface of the street. Workers cut about five feet out of the old pipe where it ruptured and replaced it with plastic pipe. The street surface also rose up and cracked above the break during the flooding and will be repaved by East Bay MUD.

El Cerrito police and fire cordoned off the area during the flooding.

Marks said the water main was apparently shut off about 8:30 a.m. He said he believed it started about a quarter of an hour before he arrived at work at 8 a.m. to find employees already battling the debris-choked stream.

The restaurant suffered no damage, he said.

"In the end, it was mainly a lot of inconvenience," he said.

The fire department used a fire hose to divert the water while restaurant workers used brooms to keep water away from the doors, reader Steve Crawford reported.

Editor's note: A special thanks to Crawford for sending in several of the attached photos from the scene before 8 a.m..