A 36-inch water main dating to Calvin Coolidge's administration broke Wednesday outside One Gateway Center, Downtown, spewing more water over that corner of the Golden Triangle than the floods of 2004 and 1996. Up to 30 million gallons -- enough to keep Niagara Falls flowing for 40 seconds -- flooded busy streets and parking garages, lowering the city's 120 million-gallon Highland Park 2 reservoir from 20 feet to about 18 feet. Torrents of water two feet deep in some places gushed through streets, into buildings and over the feet of shocked business owners and patrons. Water inundated three underground parking garages, ruined about 200 cars and forced 7,000 people to evacuate seven buildings. Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority officials didn't know what caused the 80-year-old cast-iron pipe to burst at 10:30 a.m. The break under Fort Duquesne Boulevard cut water pressure Downtown and on the South Side and North Side. Flooding forced officials to cut power to office complexes at Gateway Center and the Gateway Towers apartment building rather than risk a short-circuit. City police Cmdr. Paul Donaldson said one minor injury was reported, but gave no details. The 600 block of Stanwix Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard's eastbound lanes remained closed last night as crews from Oakdale-based Independent Enterprises, under contract with the water authority, worked to find and fix the problem. The powerful flood buckled a 50-foot section of sidewalk and shoved several cars down the boulevard. In the middle of it all, a few feet from the main entrance to the KDKA headquarters on Fort Duquesne, an abandoned FedEx delivery truck sat in water up to its bumper as a thick fountain -- the source of all this trouble -- bubbled up near its front grill. "Today we learned a hard lesson -- water is not something we should take for granted," Mayor Tom Murphy said. The 350 residents of Gateway Towers were evacuated and the building remained without power last night as city firefighters and public works employees pumped water out of the basement and sub-basement. The building's circuit box was completely submerged, as was some wiring in Gateway Tower 1, which could force the buildings' owners to replace wiring before restoring power, said Ron Graziano, head of Pittsburgh's Bureau of Building Inspection. No damage estimate was available. The Allegheny County Health Department will test the water today, but Director Bruce Dixon said he believes it's safe to drink because water was flowing out of the system, not into it. "I would drink the water," Dixon said. Parking near it is another story. Madeline Nowak usually takes the bus to work at Coldwell Banker in Gateway Center, but yesterday she had a hair appointment after work and decided to park her Mercedes SUV in the adjacent underground garage. She wishes she hadn't. Standing in the humid garage, the air thick with the odor of motor oil and gasoline, she could just make out her vehicle with a flashlight. Two River Rescue workers waded to the SUV and told her the bad news: the dirty, battery-acid laced water was in her car. She sighed and shook her head. "I'm just hoping the car will be able to drive again," said Nowak, 30, of Cranberry. Bonnie Smola isn't holding out any hope. For nine years she has lived in one of the Gateway Towers' condominiums and she keeps her 2002 limited edition Volkswagen Beetle parked in the lower level of the garage -- the level that was completely underwater within an hour of the break. Smola also keeps a customized motorcycle in the garage. It's probably destroyed too, she said. In tears she called her insurance agent, who told her the agency could have a rental car to her in 20 minutes. She passed on the offer, saying she has nowhere to go. "I just cried," she said. "It's very emotional when you know your two beloved vehicles are trashed." About 175 cars were in the garage when the water main broke. Only six didn't suffer any damage, said John Butler, 46, an attendant in the garage. "We had everybody calling down asking, 'Can you save my car?'" said Butler, of Morningside. "We can't save anything." Butler was in the parking garage booth when the line broke. When he saw the wall of water coming at him, he had only seconds to run the 10 feet to the garage exit. Any longer, he said, and would have needed a surfboard to ride the rushing water. Carole Clifford's Acura would have been down there too, had she not decided to drive from her Gateway Towers home to her office on First Avenue yesterday morning. "That was lucky," she said. "It would probably be floating to Oakmont by now." Clifford was locked out of her 24th-floor condominium. While other buildings in the area were voluntarily evacuated, Gateway Towers residents who were home at the time of the flood were told to stay put; they were later evacuated. The Salvation Army and Red Cross set up stations to help displaced residents and found places to stay for seven of them last night. All the other evacuees stayed with friends or relatives, Red Cross officials said. "I left the building this morning at a little before 9 a.m.," Clifford said. "Who knows when I will get back in." It could have been a lot worse, Mayor Murphy said. "This is the main waterline for Downtown, where several hundred thousand people come every day,'' Murphy said. "The fact that we didn't have a lot of people hurt says a lot about luck. But we will be inconvenienced for a few days.'' Late yesterday, officials set up a system of nearly 180 pumps to suck the water out of basements and sub-basements. Several were completely underwater. Water authority Director Michael Lichte said 1,500 miles of waterlines run beneath the city's streets, most of them old. The city is replacing many lines, but won't have the entire system revamped for 20 or 30 years, Murphy said. "When Fort Duquesne Boulevard was being rebuilt (in 2001), the water authority felt that this 36-inch pipe that broke today was in good shape, so they didn't replace it," Murphy said. Staff writers Richard Byrne Reilly, Allison Heinrichs, Brian Bowling, Tony LaRussa and Jill King Greenwood contributed to this report. Additional Information:

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Flow chart Twenty million to 30 million gallons of water gushed from a broken water main on Fort Duquesne Boulevard in just two hours Wednesday, according to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. Thirty million gallons of water is enough to:

Fill the Squirrel Hill Tunnels, with nearly 4 million gallons of water to spare Fill the 1.6-million-gallon Dormont Pool, Pennsylvania's largest outdoor swimming pool, nearly 19 times Water more than 1,000 acres of grass for a week Wash 750,000 loads of laundry Flush 18.7 million toilets Wash 300,000 cars Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review research

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