MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- The water moved with such force that it knocked down retaining walls, ripped apart fences and uprooted trees.
For more than an hour on Monday morning, a ruptured main at the top of a hill at Mc-Kelvey Road and Roth Hill Drive gushed, wreaking havoc on the homes below.
The 20-inch main was more than 50 years old, and officials at Missouri American Water suspect that drought conditions combined with the pipe's age caused it to burst.
"It was shooting up higher than a telephone pole," said Maryland Heights Police Capt. Rex Gooch. "It looked like a geyser."
Seven homes sustained damage and three were evacuated, including one directly in the path of the spray.
Firefighters carried Lore Valle, 86, a widow who recently had her hip replaced, to safety as water slammed against her home.
"It was hitting the foundation," said Valle's daughter, Lore Wise, who was in town from Birmingham, Ala., to help care for her mother. "Another foot to the right, and it would have bashed in the bedroom windows."
Ann Dettmer, a spokeswoman for Missouri American Water, said the main was repaired by 4 p.m.
Water utilities have seen mains rupture across the Midwest this summer because of dry weather, Dettmer said. In May, June and July this year, Missouri American had 856 mains burst. That number was up 152, or 21 percent, from the same period last year, Dettmer said.
The company serves St. Louis County and about 30,000 customers in St. Charles County. It maintains about 4,200 miles of water mains in St. Louis County.
Dettmer said Missouri American Water is spending about $53 million to replace old mains this year.
Monday's break forced Parkway officials to dismiss classes early and cancel all after-school activities at nearby McKelvey Elementary, which was without water. But Parkway officials announced that the school would reopen today.
Valle's home, where she has lived since the 1960s, is just across Mc-Kelvey from where the main ruptured. The water plowed down her shrubs and nearly tore the wraparound porch away from the home.
Wise did not yet know the extent of the damage. The water that poured into her mother's basement was filled with dirt, so she thought it was possible that the foundation had shifted.
Like many residents in the area, Valle had just replaced her roof after a hail storm in April.
"Apparently we are doing the top and then the bottom," Wise said.
By midafternoon, insurance agents and restoration trucks had descended on the area to assess the damage and pump water from basements.
Dettmer said Missouri American's insurance company, Travelers Insurance, would handle the claims.
"Our goal is to get everybody back to where they were," Dettmer said.
That might not be possible for MacKenzie Dixon, 8. She teared up when describing all she had lost -- her entire room on the lower level of her split-foyer home.
Her father, Jeff, said he was just thankful that the flooding occurred during the day, not at night when his daughter was asleep. He said water rose as high as the light switch in the basement.
"It was crazy," he said. "There was water everywhere."
Next door, Harold Strothkamp, 89, stood at the top of his basement stairs and shined a flashlight on the swamp below. Floating in the foot-deep murky water was an old television, a sofa and recliner.
Strothkamp, a retired Navy captain and World War II veteran, planned to check into a hotel.
"This is going to be a hell of an insurance claim," he said.
Copyright 2012 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
