Tense Rescues Follow Massive Water Main Break

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Rescue Workers Save Stranded Drivers

Emergency personnel rescue trapped motorists from a flooded street after a 66-inch water main burst in Montgomery County Tuesday morning.

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"We won't be able to do that until we get a look at the ground," White said. Although the pipe is 44 years old, White said that is not particularly old as pipes go.

At its peak, White said, the 66-inch pipe was spewing 150,000 gallons of water a minute. That figure has dropped, he said, but he did not know by how much.

White said there were no health advisories connected with the rupture, and no plans yet to advise residents to boil water.

Last month, Prince George's County residents were asked to boil water for five days in response to a major water main break near Largo, which created the possibility that contaminants would seep into the water.

The WSSC was recently the subject of a study by a citizens group based in Montgomery County spurred by another water main break over the summer. The study by the Maryland Tax Education Foundation concluded that the water company operates with efficiency comparable to other publicly-owned utilities but is less efficient than privately-held companies.

The group found that the WSSC's infrastructure, including miles of water and sewer pipes, is in dire need of replacement, a fact that the utility's managers have been highlighting. The study also found that it has cost more for the WSSC to replace pipelines than other utilities.

WSSC managers disagreed with some parts of the study but agreed with the foundation's conclusion that the utility needs to replace infrastructure.

Montgomery County officials have set up a hotline at 240-777-4200 for residents concerned about water quality.

Staff writers Nelson Hernandez, Leonard Bernstein, William Branigin, Rosalind S. Helderman and Dan Morse contributed to this report.