New York’s best-known and busiest underground station, Times Square, fell prey to spectacular flooding at dawn on Tuesday, caused by a burst pipe.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) released videos and photos on Tuesday of curtains of water cascading down from the ceilings of Times Square – 42nd Street station in the heart of Manhattan at around 03:00 a.m. (09:00 a.m. Brussels time), very quickly engulfing the tracks of several lines.
The MTA New York City Transit, which manages one of the oldest and densest underground networks in the world — operating 365 days a year and 24 hours a day — said on its website that a water main under the pavement had ruptured at 7th Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan.
Photos and videos distributed to the press showed the street flooded on the surface and the water level rising very quickly on the underground tracks.
Traffic was halted and the water supply cut off in the area, while hundreds of MTA workers and engineers pumped and cleaned up.
Everything was back to normal by midday.
New York’s underground system, which first began operating in 1868 and went into service in 1904, is one of the most extensive in the world, but its infrastructure is often in shambles in a megalopolis of more than 8.5 million people.
Times Square, with its illuminated advertising panels, is one of the busiest places in New York with millions of tourists flocking there every year.
