It was almost a standard day for Wellington resident Philippa Carter as she parked her car to head to an appointment.
That was until she was called by police after a water main burst under her car – likely writing it off.
The freak incident occurred on Thorndon Quay late this morning.
Although the incident was extremely unlucky for Carter, she explained to 1News her car is possibly preventing the geyser from the burst pipe throwing water onto State Highway 1 motorway over Thorndon Quay.
“They want to leave the car there until they can get the water off,” Carter said.
She explained the main burst under her front-left hand tyre, and the ground around it had created “quite a big sink hole”, but her car was balancing on the water.
Speaking on the city’s infrastructure, Carter added the water system is “absolutely shot to pieces”.
“No one wants to take responsibility for it, and it’s not good enough to just keep passing the buck on because it’s not a vote winner, it’s not good enough.”
Although she may be left with an unusable car – Carter joked about her parking fee potentially being refunded.
“I hope I don’t have to pay for that,” she laughed.
Speaking on the incident, a Wellington Water spokesperson said: "Our Rongotai Water teams were called to a break in a water main on Thorndon Quay today at approximately 11.15am.
"Unfortunately, a private vehicle was parked over the point of the break and the volume of water released has caused damage to the vehicle. We can confirm that Wellington Water staff did not instruct the owner of the vehicle that it had to remain in place until the pipe was fixed.
"The break happened at a point where a property's connection joined the water pipe. As you may be aware, we have had other large scale bursts this week, of a similar nature. Unfortunately, this is a symptom of an aging pipe network that is failing, due to historical underinvestment. We work as hard as we can to minimise the impacts of these bursts when they happen."
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