‘Like something... in a movie.’ Water geyser during main break startled Charlotte driver

Katrina Guiles was driving on Remount Road near her home late Monday afternoon when she chanced upon an otherworldly scene: A tremendous geyser of water shooting just feet from her car.

“As I’m approaching it, it just looked like something that you would see in a movie,” the 41-year-old Guiles told The Charlotte Observer on Tuesday. “Something like when they say the dam burst, and you see all of the water shooting out of it, it was just like that. Just right in front of me.”

Charlotte Water officials are still investigating the cause of a water main break that sparked the geyser and temporarily disrupted service across much of the city, including the airport. Age of the broken main transmission line may have been a factor, Charlotte Water Director Angela Charles told reporters Tuesday. The line was installed in 1955, officials said.

Service was restored early Tuesday, but concerns remain over water quality in the 16 affected ZIP codes

“Out of an abundance of caution,” the city advised customers who experienced low or no pressure in their taps to boil the water before consuming it. No illnesses have been reported, officials said Tuesday, and it’s fine to use your water if you didn’t experience low or no pressure.

As for Guiles: “It kind of leaves you with that question: What happened?” she said. “How did it start, what went wrong, did they fix it? Is it going to happen again?

“Of course, we don’t like our water pressure to be low,” she said. “But you do want to know, is everything taken care of?”

Guiles said she didn’t know what to feel when she saw the geyser.

“I just know it was an amazing sight,” she said. “Just to see something like that happen just a few feet away from car as I was driving by.”

When she got home that night, she noticed the pressure in her taps “was pretty low,” she said. “And I know that only happened because of all the water that I’d seen happen not too far from where I live.”