Brentwood cleans up after Sunday morning flood

By Dan Hilborn
Published June 29, 2005


Things are returning to normal at Brentwood Town Centre after a broken water main caused substantial flooding and forced the temporary shutdown of the entire lower floor of the shopping centre on Sunday morning.

"A six-inch (15-centimetre) water main ruptured inside the building, causing extensive flood damage to the lower level," centre manager Brian Wong said. "It was a joint in between two sections of pipe that slipped. That's one of those things that happens. It's a 25-year-old section of pipe."

Wong noted that all except 10 of the 130 stores in the shopping centre opened as usual on Monday morning and building operations were virtually back to normal that afternoon. The main anchor tenants and all the stores on the upper level of the mall were largely unaffected by the mishap, Wong said.

"We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers on Sunday," Wong said. "This type of event we can prepare for, but we never want to see happen. We had great cooperation from our retail tenants and we hope to be back and fully operational in the next day or so. Customers won't even notice that it happened."

Wong credits an onsite security guard with spotting the leaking water coming from a utility room on the lower level of the centre at about 7 a.m. Sunday morning. By the time water seeped into the shopping areas of the centre, it was only about two inches (five cm) deep, Wong said, adding that the full extent of the damage could be difficult to determine because each of the affected retail stores has its own insurance policy.

"We're still in emergency mode getting the water out of the building," he said. "We'll sit down later to establish the extent of the repair bill."