Water main bursts in Lewiston

LEWISTON (WGME) – Crews are working in the bitter cold to fix a water main break in Lewiston.

The Sun Journal reports that thousands of gallons of water flooded not only streets, but backyards and basements.

Crews in Lewiston got the call around 5 p.m., and the water was still gushing onto Ashmount Street three hours later.

There are some residents without water.

Officials say they had to shut down about nine water gates before they could get to digging and repairing the pipes.

They think it’s a 16-inch break.

The supervisor says they have 3 to 3 1/2 feet of frost, so that could be the cause, or it could be a sudden change in pressure that snapped the pipe.

Residents were in and out of their homes checking progress, and providing coffee for crews working in this frigid weather.

One neighbor lives adjacent to Ashmount Street and says these homes were built in the 1960s, so the pipes are probably a little rusty.

“It looked like a 3-foot wave is what it looked like coming out of that bank, and as you can see the bank is pretty much gone, but it was quite a lot of water coming out of there,” neighbor Raymond Toutain said.

The supervisor says it could be a quick fix or they could be there for hours.