The 16-inch main broke at about 6:30 a.m. in front of a house at 1510 10th Ave. near Maluhia Street.

Board of Water Supply spokeswoman Denise DeCosta said water service was restored last night to about 10 customers affected by yesterday’s water main break. However, work on a broken 4-inch sewer line did not start until 7 a.m. today, said DeCosta. Once the sewer line is repaired, crews will repair the roadway and the adjoining sidewalk.

Police said a section of 10th Avenue near Maluahia Street remained closed until repairs are completed.

Garry Ono said he was sleeping upstairs when he heard his in-laws, on the ground floor, scurrying to move furniture. As he woke up and came down the stairs, he heard a sound like heavy rain.

Water was flowing in through a door that led to the carport, he said, saturating the carpet. The carport had about a foot of standing water.

“This is the second time in the last two or three years,” Ono said as he and his son, Christian, came out to the street to fill a bucket with drinking water from a water company tank. And, he said, another pipe once broke uphill from 10th, flooding some of his neighbors’ properties.

Robert Utterdyke, a work foreman for the Board of Water Supply, said his team was working hard to have water service restored by late last night. Behind him a backhoe was scooping mud from a hole nearly 10 feet deep, exposing several yards of the burst pipe. An electric company crane held a utility pole upright in the crater.

The water pipes in Ono’s neighborhood and in other older neighborhoods across O‘ahu were nearly 50 years old, Utterdyke said. They were scheduled for replacement, but the list was altered each time a break occurred. The more troublesome a neighborhood, he said, the higher its pipes ranked on the list.

A smaller break later in the day left an unknown number of Nu‘uanu residents without water as well, a water supply official said last night.

Gerald and Tomoko Dung, who live at 3468 Maluhia St., just behind Ono, got the worst of the water damage according to A-1 Extraction workers, who, contracted by the Water Supply Board, were pulling up the flooring of the Dung’s storage room.

The walls would have to be stripped, too, they said.

Dung said his wife, Tomoko, woke him early yesterday when she heard an odd noise. When he walked outside to investigate, he saw a waterfall cascade over a short wall that separated his property from the back yards of houses on 10th Avenue.

“I opened that door,” he said yesterday, nodding toward the room where the contractors were working. “And the water just poured out, like something in a cartoon.