An entire floor of a San Francisco high rise has been displaced due to flooding caused by a tenant who officials said damaged a high-pressured fire fighting pipe.
Residents at the 100 Van Ness luxury apartments woke up Tuesday morning to the sound of fire alarms in their building due to the flooding, with some describing the incident as a scene from the movie Titanic.
"One of the stairwells was completely flooded," resident KJ Kim said. "There was water gushing down from the stairs above. I had to use the other stairs."
All residents living on the 11th floor of the building have been displaced, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. Fire officials also said there are some units in floors below that were also damaged.
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While residents were waiting outside with firefighters, they also saw a tenant being carted away.
"All I saw was somebody on a stretcher and they were covered with a blanket-type thing," Kim said. "And they got carried into an ambulance."
Fire crews and building management found a tenant on the 11th floor who had somehow damaged a high-pressured firefighting water pipe. The tenant, identified as Michael Nien, was described as being in a "behavioral crisis."
Nien, 46, has since been arrested by police. He faces charges of felony vandalism and resisting arrest.
SFFD Lt. Jonathan Baxter said he has never seen someone break open a building standpipe before.
"There's a lot of process that a person would have to go through to actually get the water to start running," Baxter said. "It's not something that's super easy to turn the water on."
A letter to residents said the elevators are among the things damaged in the flooding.
NBC Bay Area has reached out to 100 Van Ness for details on how many units were damaged, but have not heard back.
