Venice Canals residents woke up to a soggy surprise Saturday morning after a ruptured pipe blasted a towering geyser of water into the air, flooding the quiet neighborhood.
The leak was reported just before 8 a.m., with water shooting above nearby homes as stunned neighbors told The California Post they watched Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews wade into the flooded street to make repairs.
“I woke up to the sound of spraying,” resident Raleigh Tomlinson told The Post.
“I saw water spewing into the sky above my apartment building,” Tomlinson said.
She said she grabbed her dog’s leash and ran outside, where crews were already scrambling to contain the leak.
“There were already four or five DWP workers there, knee-deep in the water trying to fix it,” she said.
LADWP later said the incident was a private property leak — not a rupture in the city’s water main.
Still, neighbors said the gushing water flooded the street and temporarily disrupted water service to nearby buildings.
Tomlinson said the water quickly spread through the neighborhood.
“It filled up the entire street for about a block with deep water,” she said.
She said her landlord shut off water service to the building while crews worked to repair the damaged pipe.
Although the Venice Canals occasionally see street flooding during heavy winter storms, Tomlinson said Saturday’s scene was unlike anything she had experienced in the six years she has lived there.
“It’s obviously a hot, sunny day, so seeing the whole street full of water was very unusual,” she said.
The Venice Canals flood comes just days after a much larger water disaster rocked West Hollywood, where a 102-year-old cast-iron water main beneath Sunset Boulevard burst, unleashing millions of gallons of water, trapping vehicles and forcing major road closures as crews spent hours isolating the break.
The back-to-back incidents have once again put a spotlight on Los Angeles’ aging water infrastructure.
LADWP maintains roughly 7,400 miles of water mains, many of them decades old, and responds to an average of three to four water main breaks every day. While the utility replaces about 45 miles of aging pipeline annually, much of the system was built nearly a century ago, meaning full replacement will take decades.
