A large water main break turned a stretch of Elbridge Street into a river early Friday morning, flooding the roadway, with parked cars on the street and pavement buckling into what looked like a sinkhole in Philadelphia's Mayfair neighborhood. Firefighters were on scene working to address the situation as water continued to pool across the block.
The break was reported around 7 a.m. on Elbridge Street near Roosevelt Boulevard, according to NBC10 Philadelphia, which said crews responded to the large break in the Mayfair neighborhood Friday morning. The station's SkyForce 10 helicopter flew over the scene and captured several cars parked on the flooded street alongside what appeared to be a sinkhole as firefighters worked nearby.
6abc placed the flooded, buckled roadway more specifically in the 2600 block of Elbridge Street, describing a scene where the street had visibly buckled under the rush of water. The outlet reported that the break had created a sinkhole in the section Friday, though as of its report, there had been no word on what caused the main to fail.
Cause Of The Break Remains Unclear
Neither outlet covering Friday's incident has identified what triggered the failure. The uncertainty echoes a pattern across the city, where aging infrastructure frequently gives way without immediate explanation. Philadelphia's water mains are old — the average pipe in the Philadelphia Water Department's system was 75.64 years old as of January 2022, according to a report from Billy Penn.
That same analysis found the city has averaged 776 water main breaks a year over a 15-year span, with January historically the worst month, averaging 179 breaks since 1965. Cold snaps can compound the problem quickly: a Philadelphia Water Department spokesperson once told 6abc that breaks climbed from two on a Monday to nine the next day and into double digits by Wednesday during one frigid stretch.
Mayfair Has Seen Breaks Before
Friday's incident is not the first time Mayfair's streets have given way beneath a ruptured main, though these are separate events with their own causes and impacts. In one earlier case, a 12-inch water main broke around 5 a.m. in the 7900 block of Lexington Avenue and caused a partial road collapse, 6abc reported. In another, a 12-inch main broke shortly before 3 a.m. near Guilford Street on Roosevelt Boulevard, leaving roughly 20 homes without water, according to CBS Philadelphia.
A 2018 break in Center City caused about six inches of flooding and knocked out power temporarily for 1,000 customers, per Billy Penn's reporting.
The cause of the Elbridge Street break remained unknown Friday morning. Firefighters were working at the scene to address the situation.
