SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The explosion of water was relentless, shooting almost 50 feet into the air before crashing down onto two San Diego Firefighters.
San Diego Public Utilities says crews worked for 30 minutes. The water almost up to their shoulders, they tried to shut down a knocked-over fire hydrant.
“I have never seen anything like that,” said Kate Justin, an employee at Be Fit Pilates.
It started at around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday in the parking lot of a strip mall in Hillcrest. Anyone parked in the area or the underground lot couldn't leave.
“I've seen floods in the street but never literally 34 feet in the air,” Justin said.
Kate Justin works at a Pilates studio right above where it happened. She says they notified clients of the flooding on Instagram before her class at noon.
“No one showed up for that one," she said. "I think everyone saw the Instagram story with water spewing out, and they didn’t want to try.”
By the time Justin arrived, most of the flooding had cleared.
“Few hours later, everything was gone; all the water was gone," she said. "I was worried about the underground parking being flooded, but that was fine as well.”
But the parking lot wasn't the only area impacted. The water flowed over a nearby cliff and onto one lane of the Northbound 163 below.
CalTrans crews responded to the emergency flooding. They closed the Washington off-ramp at 8 a.m. and reopened it at 2 p.m.
“No water. We have a whole team making sure everything is fine, making sure whatever happened there doesn’t happen again,” a representative told ABC 10News.
Public utilities crews have been here all day. A representative says they'll replace the fire hydrant overnight.
