Two water main breaks in Montreal made for messy clean-up jobs for firefighters early Tuesday morning.
The most damage was caused in Rosemont near the intersection of Masson Street and 16th Ave., with water flowing to 18th Ave.
Residents were woken up around 3:20 a.m. when a water main broke and flooded their basements.
One resident told CTV Montreal's Caroline Van Vlaardingen he had more than 1.5 m of water in his basement. Another said he had half a meter of water flow into his house after his garage doors burst.
"About 3:20, 3:30 in the morning I heard something 'poom' a little bit," said Antonio Cruz.
"I come downstairs and everything is okay. I come back and and the water's everywhere."
"I open this door," said Cruz, pointing to his basement door "and the water's inside. The water here, there, everything like that."
He spent the morning cleaning up, but still needed to find some way to pump the water out of his basement.
Firefighters spent the night pumping water out of the street and into sewers, and city crews remained on site to clean up the street and spread salt.
Julie Gascon, the communications officer for the firefighters, said the wide difference in temperatures may account for the pipes bursting.
St. Leonard break
Firefighters were called to the first burst pipe at 3 a.m. in St. Leonard.
Water was flooding into a home at 4461 Des Grandes Prairies Boulevard and spilled into streets near the intersection of Lionel-Groulx Street.
It turns out that broken pipe, about 20 cm in diameter, is owned by a private company and it will be responsible for repairs.
In that area crews were used a bulldozer to push water toward sewers and to break up the quickly-forming layers of ice.
