A water main break on Wednesday morning shut down an intersection in San Francisco and left some homeowners with dry spigots.
The 12-inch cast iron pipe burst around 2 a.m. at Filbert and Mason streets. For a couple of hours, it gushed dirt, gravel and water - ankle deep - into the intersection.
By 4:30 a.m., the San Francisco water department turned it off and soon had the homeowners on the couple blocks of Filbert back up and running.
A supervisor with the department believes the 75-year-old pipe failed because of its old age combined with the cold temperatures overnight. The Powell mason cable car line was temporarily shut down until muni was certain it had removed all the debris from the cable line slots along Mason.
