Department of Water and Power crews made steady progress today in repairing a water main that ruptured north of UCLA, sending 20 million gallons of water cascading onto streets and the campus, but Sunset Boulevard will remain closed into the weekend.
Workers tonight began removing 267 vehicles from a portion of UCLA’s Parking Structure Four that was not flooded, officials said.
The vehicles were being taken to parking lot 36, where owners will be able to retrieve them beginning at 10 a.m. Friday.
As many as 900 vehicles were stranded in two flooded parking structures.
Keith Session, assistant director of the DWP’s water distribution division, said welders were working in various locations to fabricate fittings and pipes that will be used to repair the ruptured main that sent a geyser of water through Sunset Boulevard.
“It is in our schedule to have the repairs in the water main completed on late Friday evening or early Saturday morning and then we will start right at that time with the reconstruction of the street and the backfill of the trench,” Session said.
Once the pipe repair is completed, it would take about a “day or so” to fully fix the street.
While Sunset Boulevard remains blocked between roughly Veteran and Hilgard avenues, authorities suggested using Wilshire, Santa Monica and Olympic boulevards as alternate routes, and encouraged motorists to carpool or telecommute.
The 93-year-old water main, which carries water to the area from the Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir, ruptured on Sunset near Marymount Place just north of the campus shortly before 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, turning streets into rivers and portions of the UCLA campus into oceans of water and mud.
The rupture occurred at a Y-shaped juncture of the 30-inch main with a 36-inch main. Leaking valves just east of the break caused further complications and extended the repair time, since crews couldn’t begin work on the pipe until the flow of water was stopped.
The water flow was finally halted Wednesday night. DWP crews excavated a roughly 56-foot-by-41-foot hole around the pipes, and then shored up trenches to ensure workers would be safe while carrying out the repair work.
On Wednesday, two workers were hospitalized after being exposed to carbon monoxide fumes from a generator being used to pump water from UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.
A total of six workers were examined at the scene, but only two were taken to hospitals, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
