Super Bowl Super Flush

A 1984 water main break in Salt Lake City becomes part of the Super Bowl Legend

LeRoy W. Hooton, Jr.

January 28, 2008

How does a watermain break have anything to do with a national championship football game? Normally it doesn’t, but circumstances have propelled Salt Lake City into the myriad of legends associated with the Super Bowl. Like Lazarus, at this time of year, Salt Lake City becomes part of the national fixation with the superabundance of the Super Bowl because of a watermain break that occurred  24-years ago on California Avenue.

The January 22, 1984 watermain break occurred about 15-minutes into the halftime period and based on the hype surrounding the game and comments made by the field supervisor to the media, the Super Bowl Flush was blamed for the break, ensuring that the incident would be memorialized as a Super Bowl myth. 

The incident really got legs in 1999, when the Los Angles Times ran a story on the 1984 main break. When the Times reporter Tony Perry contacted the Department of Public Utilities, he was told that the break did occur, but watermain breaks are common in all water systems and the Department could not confirm that a big flush caused the break.

The story appeared nationally, including the Salt Lake Tribune.  The front-page headline read “America Flush with Bowl Legends as Big Game

Salt Lake Tribune photo of California Avenues street flooded with water from a 16-inch watermain break.

Approaches.” The article began, “It happens every year: Super Bowl Sunday approacheth and super-size things are said about the whopping impact on America wrought by the football spectacular. The water systems of major cities are in peril of collapsing due to a thunderous amount of simultaneous toilet flushing at halftime.  It happened in Salt Lake City, you know.” Mr. Perry went on to describe other examples of Super Bowl tales from guacamole production to Disneyland to the stock market, et al. He concluded, “Beyond many a good legend there is a kernel of fact or a dash of hopeful thinking, and so it is with Super Bowl legends.”

Once the Los Angeles Times article provided national exposure, the Super Bowl and the 16-inch watermain break became synonymous with the Super Bowl legend.  Because of its notoriety, the 1984 watermain break on a cold January afternoon has become part of Americana.