City agencies continue to respond to a Manhattan water main break that wreaked havoc on Monday morning, with street closures in effect along Broadway, between 61st and 63rd Streets, as the Department of Environmental Protection repairs the 36-inch water main.

The main broke at 5 a.m., just north of 62nd Street on Broadway, and the water was turned off three hours later. The DEP said that the broken section was removed on Monday night, with a new section in place by Tuesday morning. However, streets will likely be closed for another two days, as work continues.

"Drivers should avoid the area as there will be intermittent roadway closures," said DEP spokesman Ted Timbers.

The investigation into the cause of the break, which caused major problems for the MTA and commuters, is ongoing, but one avenue the DEP is looking at is the recently unseasonably warm, then freezing weather, combined with the age of the system (the main was installed in 1922). The NY Times quoted Timbers as saying, "Wintry conditions typically make problems worse, particularly with 'freeze-thaw' cycles during which moisture in the ground expands and then contracts, putting pressure on the pipes."

Timbers also told the Times, "It used to be that it would get cold and it would stay cold in the winter, and you’d just have the early winter and late winter weather fluctuations. Now we’re seeing many more fluctuations during the winter season."

During an interview on NY1, DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza addressed the aging infrastructure, "Age alone is not just an indicator of when we need to replace equipment. We’ve got some pipes that are from the late 1800s that are still in great shape and may continue service for another century, but we use a bunch of different tools—physical, chemical, analytical to determine when pipes need to be replaced. We do about 400 million dollars worth of water main repairs and replacements every year. About a mile of new water mains go in every week in the city, so we’re proactively doing that."

There are 6,800 miles of water mains in NYC, and the DEP says that the city averages about 6.5 breaks per 100 miles of water main, versus other large municipalities in the U.S. which average 25 main breaks per 100 miles. So far, the number of breaks for the 2020 NYC fiscal year is a bit under last fiscal year's (which ended up being 459), according to the DEP; there were 521 breaks during the 2018 fiscal year and 428 during the 2017 fiscal year.

Other buildings in the neighborhood were undergoing major operations to pump out water. The Times reported that the parking garage of the high-rise, Lincoln Plaza Tower, had up to 60 ruined cars, many of them luxury models. New York Institute of Technology's basement auditorium, which served as a screening site for independent movie lovers, also flooded, while one co-op owner on West 62nd Street said his building's basement had water up to the ceiling. And then there was another parking garage on 62nd Street and Broadway that was captured on video as being partly submerged.