Crews continued to work Wednesday to repair a major SODO artery following a water main break early Tuesday.
Seattle Public Utilities and the city's Dept. of Transportation worked all Tuesday and overnight to reopen 1st Ave. S. at S. Massachusetts St. The break spilled more than 1 million gallons of water and flooded area businesses.
The roads were expected to be open by Wednesday night, but an SDOT official said repairs may not be done until Thursday.
SDOT said one lane northbound on 1st Ave. S. from S. Massachusetts St. to Edgar Martinez Dr. is closed, along with S. Massachusetts St. from S. Occidental Ave. to 1st Ave. S.
The break happened around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, flooding about 20 area businesses, including The Showbox, where a different kind of act was taking center stage.
Water came through the doors overnight.
“It just flooded right in,” said Showbox General Manager Brian McFadin. “We might have some sound equipment that’s damaged.”
Show business takes a back seat to the business at hand.
“It probably seeped underneath the state and some of our drywall that’s around the wall,” said McFadin.
The floors inside the Showbox are now a lighter shade of gray, caked with mud after more than a million gallons of water flooded The Showbox and other businesses on the east side of 1st Ave. S. and Massachusetts.
Dave Muto, director of operations for Seattle Public Utilities, said the culprit was a 16-inch cast iron water main that split apart.
“The rest of the pipe is still in the ground, so it broke off here. What you’re seeing is roughly a third of the diameter of the pipe that came off. Now that’s a very large piece that broke off,” said Muto.
The pipe’s age is a factor, but exactly why it broke is still a mystery.
“There’s construction out here and so on but there’s nothing that we know of that should’ve impacted the water main directly at this point,” said Muto.
Reporting by KING 5's Meg Coyle.
