ARLINGTON, Va. - Crews were working Tuesday afternoon to shore up the hole around a massive water main break in Arlington, so they could begin replacing the ruptured 32-inch main.

Officials hope to have repairs wrapped up Wednesday and the road repaved by Thanksgiving.

Crews worked throughout the night trying to fix the broken main. A replacement pipe arrived Tuesday morning.

While the exact cause of the break has not been determined, investigators are leaning toward the pipe's 40-year age.

The rupture near the intersection of N. Glebe Road and N. Old Glebe Road produced a torrent of water, flooding homes and destroying property along North Dittmar Road in Arlington.

ABC 7 News obtained home video showing a wall of water overwhelming backyards. 

Ed Dickey feels lucky. There's a water line about two feet high on his door, but his basement took only about an inch of water.

"I think from where we're at and on up got it a lot worse than us," said Ed Dickey.

Jane McFarland, who lives next door, isn't feeling quite as fortunate.

"I looked out the window and you could see it," McFarland . "You saw was a river of brown water coming down this street, it was torrential."

She called 911 three times when the wall of water came rushing into her back yard and poured into her basement.

"Yeah and they told me it wasn't technically an emergency," McFarland said. "If the water could have been shut off sooner, them maybe I wouldn't have $15,000-20,000 in damage to my house."

The McFarlands' basement was flooded by the break.

Arlington water crews say they rushed to the scene as soon as they were alerted.

"We got a phone call and I came home immediately from work as did my wife," said James Bailey, who lives four houses down.

Bailey has little damage to show inside, but river left a debris field in his backyard.

Bailey hopes to all of it back where it belongs by the end of the day.

The water's power pushed over the Hughes' fence, depositing mounds of mud in their yard and ruining just about everything in their basement-level garage.

"And all this stuff that's stored down below in the carport with tarps over it and plastic to keep it safe -- it's all totaled," said John Hughes.

Monday night, the Morse family was hit hard by the water main break.

"We were standing in water and mud through our carpets and just debris out in the yard everywhere," said Barbara Morse, Arlington resident

Shortly after, the family had no choice but to began to mop up. The water is out of their house, the saturated carpet has been removed and crews are working on drying the place out.

The Morse family put in a retaining wall a few years ago that they believe helped push a lot of the water away from their house. They feel like the flooding could have been much worse.

Crews work on repairing the water main.

The force of the eruption also buckled a huge chunk of the road, which has now been closed for repairs. Where the pipe broke now stands a huge hole in the middle of Old Glebe Road. Arlington County crews worked through the night, starting repairs and trying to figure out what went wrong.

"It could be age, it could be movement, it could be just the force of water, but we'll do our best to go back and look at our engineering records to see if we can find out what happened," said Bob Griffin, with Arlington County's Department of Environmental Services

Officials say because of the time it will likely take to make road repairs, commuters should expect a traffic mess during the Tuesday morning rush.

 Email To Friend