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A 90-year-old water main broke near California’s University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus on Tuesday, flooding the area with millions of gallons of water.

The water main break, which occurred under Sunset Boulevard, caused a geyser of water that ran through the streets, flooded car garages, and turned the campus into a shallow pool.

From the LA Times:

It took the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power about four hours to fully shut off the 30-inch-diameter line as water inundated athletic fields, underground garages filled with cars and various campus walkways.

The trunk line break offered dramatic new evidence of Los Angeles’ crumbling water infrastructure, which has been a recurring problem for years. Large sections of the water system are old and corroded, and the city has struggled to find the money to replace them.

Water pipe breaks and leaks occur several times a day in L.A., but none in recent memory was as serious as Tuesday’s flooding. DWP officials said the break was so extreme in part because the line pulls water down from the Stone Canyon Reservoir. When the line broke, water flowed out at a rate of 75,000 gallons a minute.

No one was hurt in the flooding, but at least five people had to be rescued by firefighters after they tried to save their cars in flooded underground garages.

Check out pictures from yesterday’s chaotic scene in the video above.

SOURCE: LA Times | VIDEO SOURCE: News Inc.