5 Water Main Breaks Flood Streets in Fairfax District (Los Angeles)

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power responded to at least five water main breaks in the Fairfax District Tuesday morning.

Approximately 110 customers -- out of nearly 700,000 citywide -- were experiencing service interruptions, the LADWP said.

The water-main breaks were at the following locations:

-900 block of Croft Avenue
-5800 block of La Mirada Avenue
-6000 block of Waring Avenue
-1100 block of North McCadden Place
-Fairfax Avenue and Third Street

Water main break in West Hollywood (KTLA-TV)

Source Article

I know water mains age with time and a break in a main is not something that is out of the ordinary. However 5 at one time seems a bit much. Could this be due to some sort of subtle shifting that wasn't felt conventionally?

Water mains are fairly shallow in respect to seismology so I am not sure if this is merely a coincidence or there could be something more to this. Perhaps the more prominent ATS'ers involved in this field can shed some light.

I was hoping for a map that showed these points of failure in the main to perhaps see if there was any significance. If anyone is from the area or familiar with it please feel free to add more information to this thread.

Wow. 5 at one time is bizarre. Any members in this area that can report if there was anything unusual that may have caused this? Any reports of a minor quake?

ETA: I did find this, earthquake.usgs.gov...
Maybe this has something to do with it. Not sure how close it is.

They were most likely caused by too much pressure within the system. Sometimes shutting off a main line valve, or shutting off a fire hydrant too fast will cause this as well.

i guess it could be quake cause, my initial thought was that they are old lines and if one goes it sets all of them off in a chain reaction.

saw your request for the map, so i thought id do one up.



its pretty big picture so i jsut used a thumbnail.
hope it helps your thread.

reply to post by Anishnaabe


Re: One going causing the others to go, is initially what I thought too, but the areas on this map are pretty spread out.

I suppose it's not out of the question, the water pressure in these lines can be pretty massive but with the way these are spaced, I don't know.

From the article:

It said the breaks were related to pressure changes caused by repair work done on the Lower Franklin Reservoir on Monday.

Case closed I suppose.

The 3 on the right are about 1 mile apart but the other 2 are over a mile apart and about 2 miles from the closest of the 3 on the right. I suppose they could all come from the same source but judging by the distances they could easily be from multiple sources. If they are from the same source a pressure issue is much more likely, but multiple sources are a different matter and would be much more of a concern, It will be interesting to see if more leaks appear and how close they are to these.

reply to post by KaiserSoze


Indeed, if there was something other than the maintenance pressure changes causing this I am sure more areas than just the Fairfax District will start to experience similar issues.