A water main break flooded a couple businesses Thursday evening in the Lynnwood-Mill Creek area.
Alderwood Water and Wastewater District officials told KIRO 7 crews were working on a road project while trying to make sure businesses on 164th Street wouldn’t lose water service.
General Manager Jeff Clarke said, “We had to shut down the water so that we could replace a water main as part of the project. In shutting off the water, we wanted to reroute a pipe so that we could keep several businesses in water…as part of that, a pipe fitting broke. With that, the water shot into the air.”
The O’Reilly Auto Parts store was flooded and there was slight flooding in a neighboring dry cleaning business, Regency Cleaners.
Crews shut the water within 10 minutes.
KIRO 7 asked whether the water district would be responsible for the businesses’ damage.
“We’ve already contacted our insurance pool that covers all of our activities, and they will be in contact with the store owner,” Clarke said.
O’Reilly Auto Parts referred KIRO 7 to their corporate offices for comment.
Two doors over, the owners of the restaurant Good Pho You said water nearly seeped into their kitchen.
“So very close. So scary,” said Nichapa Sathirat.
Sathirat ran out of the restaurant to take photos of the geyser.
At around the same time, Kevin Cheung was driving into the strip mall to go to dinner. He saw the massive geyser and wondered what was going on.
“I thought it might be cold enough that it would freeze a little bit and it would get frozen in that position,” he said.
Late Thursday night, Servicemasters began to work on clean-up inside the stores.
KIRO
