Sprinkler system bursts in vacant East Liberty building, flooding neighboring businesses

For much of Tuesday, the basement of the William Penn Smoke Shop in East Liberty looked like a scene from disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

A broken sprinkler system in a neighboring building flooded the convenience store's storage area with up to 4 feet of water.

Cigarette cartons and crates of soda were swept up in the fast-moving tide.

Store owner Prakash Maniyar worked feverishly to relocate inventory to higher ground but salvaged only a few packages of tortilla chips.

In all, more than $7,000 of Maniyar's merchandise was ruined, along with business records he kept in an office in the basement.

Once the water started rising, it came very fast, he said Wednesday.

Officials say the flooding began in a vacant building on North Highland Avenue and spilled into the basements of at least three nearby businesses. Fire crews pumped more than 1 million gallons of water from the stores.

The vacant building where the flooding began is owned by Nigel Parkinson, a District of Columbia -based developer, according to property records. Parkinson could not be reached Wednesday.

Neighboring business owners said city officials told them Parkinson's building wasn't properly heated, causing its sprinkler piping system to freeze and then rupture with the thaw.

The building where the flooding began has no history of code violations, said Erik Harless, assistant director of Pittsburgh's Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections.

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Sprinkler system bursts in vacant East Liberty building, flooding neighboring businesses