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Water Main Break In Uniontown Floods Church, Nearby Homes

UNIONTOWN (KDKA) -- An early morning water main break caused big problems for some residents of Fayette County during this winter cold snap.

It was early Tuesday morning when the folks living at the intersection of Bryan and Union Streets in Uniontown noticed water coming out of the ground, on to the street and into some basements.

The six-inch Penn American Water main let go around 6:30 a.m., coating the roads and creating a frozen, muddy mess for people living nearby.

"It was coming out of the manhole; it was coming out of the church and coming out of the corner on the front of the house here," Attilio LeDonne, a Uniontown resident.

He says the water was flowing into his house.

"The water was gushing out of that drain. By the time I got here, it was almost to the first level where that refrigerator is," he said. "It was too late to do anything. The water rose up past the receptacles, probably up to almost the forth block on the wall. The water went past the electrical devices on my furnace, hot water tank and my dryer."

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Across the street at Covenant Baptist Church, it was the same soaked story.

"About half of the basement was flooded to about eight-inches deep," said Pastor Mark Edwards. "The ground was so saturated it came through our foundation.

The mud and water forced the Edwards to adjust things.

"Wait for the insurance company," he said. "Cancelled a couple services we had, and we'll wait to see what happens next."

Homes hundreds of yards away from the break also experienced basement flooding as the water spilled into overwhelmed sewage drains backing it up into homes.

"What am I going to do, and how am I going to solve this problem?" said LeDonne.

That's a question on a lot of people's mind in the section of Uniontown where the main broke. Those affected are being told to contact Penn American Water to file damage claims.

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