West Hollywood rupture was L.A.’s worst in years: 17 million gallons spilled, Sunset Boulevard closed for days 27%
By Hannah Fry49% Jazmin Alvarado0%
7/17/2026, 7:34:51 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Framing Effect, and Negativity Bias, with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 21.4% saturation with 260 hits. Analysis detected 1,772 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,217 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 38.4% and a BS Rank of 27% (16,046 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 73.30% of the article peer group.
The massive Sunset Strip trunk line rupture was L.A.’s worst in years, spilling 17 million gallons of water and forcing the closure of Sunset Boulevard for at least several days.
Closures are in place on Sunset Boulevard from San Vicente Boulevard/N.
Clark Street to Horn Avenue, where the 110-year-old pipe burst unleashing a torrent of water and leaving a massive sinkhole.
Larrabee Street at Santa Monica Boulevard and Palm Avenue at Santa Monica Boulevard are also closed, according to the city of West Hollywood.
Soft closures, open only to residents, are in place at Shoreham Drive at Sunset Boulevard, Holloway Drive between Palm and Hancock avenues and San Vicente Boulevard at Cynthia Street.
The closures are poised to be a significant disruption to businesses and residents along the typically bustling section of West Hollywood.
The bulk of the damage is located just blocks away from Whisky A Go Go, the famed club where many legendary rock bands got their start.
Officials are asking motorists to avoid the area over the next several days so Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repair crews can work.
The streets surrounding the Sunset Strip were quiet early Friday aside from the hum of idling utility vehicles.
An employee at a liquor store on Sunset told The Times she’d only had two customers so far that day when typically she’d see at least 40.
But the trunk line rupture didn’t upend everyone’s day.
A Hollywood tour bus managed to navigate through the web of street closures to usher tourists around the world-famous destination.
By Friday morning crews had already pumped water out of the sinkhole where the section of damaged pipe is located.
Crews will remove a conduit for traffic signals to gain access to the 25-foot section of pipeline that needs to be replaced.
It will take DWP about 16 hours to weld the new steel pipe onto the existing trunk line, said Anselmo Collins, DWP’s chief operating officer and senior assistant general manager.
Officials estimate that the stretch of Sunset Boulevard could be reopened by Monday.
“I don’t want to guarantee that we’re going to have it open by Monday, but we’re going to do everything possible to get it open as quickly as we can,” Collins said.
“We recognize the significant impact to the West Hollywood community as well as all the people that are using Sunset Boulevard to get to and from work, so our goal is to do this as quick as we can.”
While West Hollywood has dealt with other water main breaks over the years, this one happened at the top of a hill, sending water down into businesses and homes, and causing more damage to residential properties, Mayor John Heilman said.
Water inundated a handful of residential units, including a few where electricity had to be shut off because their electrical panels were compromised.
Most of the damage was centered in subterranean garages where water had to be pumped out.
Heilman estimated that between 150 and 200 cars were damaged or destroyed in the flood.
Officials are going door to door to tell residents how they can file claims with DWP to pay for water damage.
“Our residents are amazing.
They were out yesterday morning checking on each other.
They are pretty resilient,” Heilman said.
Officials said anyone with property or vehicle damage can file a claim through LADWP at ladwp.com/claims.
LADWP claims staff will be available to assist Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 1010 Palm Ave.
They’ll be able to answer any questions about property damage and claims.
Standing in a garage full of mud and wrecked cars on Friday, Joe Artle, who manages an apartment building on Palm Avenue and Cynthia Street, stared bewildered into the distance trying to figure out what to do next.
Artle, 70, was trying to sleep when his neighbor and friend, Rudy Vargas, came banging on his door at around 3 a.m.
Thursday, panicked, urging him to get his car out of the underground garage because of the flooding.
He rushed out of the apartment and started trying to wake his neighbors.
They were only able to save maybe four of the 20 cars in the garage, Artle said.
“The water was so intense,” he said.
“It was like whitewater rapids, like when you’re river rafting.
You couldn’t stand in it; it would knock you over.”
Artle said the broken pipe unleashed the worst damage he’s seen in the 25 years he’s lived in the building.
Most of its 35 tenants lost vehicles or belongings stored in the garage.
The building’s washer and dryer units were also destroyed in the deluge.
Vargas, 40, said his adrenaline was so high that he wasn’t completely processing the situation as it was happening.
When he navigated his way outside it was akin to crossing a river, he said.
He had to grip onto street poles just to keep himself up.
“Sometimes, it rains hard enough that water comes into here, and it floods the garage, but it hasn’t been that bad, so when I came out to the kitchen window to see, and I saw it was really bad, that’s when I’m like, ‘panic mode,’” said Vargas, who has lived in the building for about 13 years.
The break, which happened before dawn on Thursday, was on a riveted steel pipe from 1916 that forms the major arteries for water delivery from reservoirs and tanks to smaller distribution mainlines across Los Angeles.
The section of the Sunset trunk line was slated to be replaced in 2031 as part of a larger project that includes replacing 6.4 miles of trunk line, 3.5 miles of 12-inch distribution pipe and a pressure regulating station.
That project is expected to take about four years, Collins said.
There are about 547 miles of trunk line underground across the city.
In 2019, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said roughly 29% of the city’s pipes were over 80 years old, approaching their typical lifespan of 100 years.
For many, the break was reminiscent of another trunk line rupture on Sunset Boulevard in 2014.
That break also sent more than 10 million gallons of water onto the UCLA campus, flooding several buildings and causing several million dollars in damage.
Utilities have been working to keep the aging water system going, but have struggled with limited funds, long project duration and the overwhelming amount of pipeline that needs to be replaced.
“We have, in the water system, a capital improvement budget that is over a billion dollars,” Collins said.
“At any given moment, we could have six or seven different projects that are in construction simultaneously.”
The utility prioritizes trunk line replacement projects based on a variety of factors including the age of the line, the leak history and the consequences of failure in a particular area.
Despite the spectacle of Thursday’s massive deluge, Collins said DWP’s leak rate remains 36% lower than the national average with 16.1 leaks per 100 miles compared to 25 leaks per 100 miles nationwide.
He added that DWP tries to do as many projects as possible without “affecting traffic in all areas of the city at the same time.”
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