As much as three feet of water transformed an underground parking lot at a Vancouver apartment building into a pool this weekend.

On Saturday, residents of an Arbutus Ridge apartment building awoke to car alarms as their parkade filled with silty water.

“There were stored tires floating in the middle of the basement,” said resident Ingrid Kastens.

“One of my neighbours tried moving his car, and it is now stranded right there, because it was a lake, everyone’s cars were flooded.”

A collector’s edition Ferrari signed by Michael Schumacher was one of the vehicles found heavily damaged, almost completely submerged.

Kastens says she has never seen anything like this before.

“Never in 20 years has it done this,” she said.

The cause of the surge was soon determined by city officials to be a burst water main near Yew and West 32nd Avenue that sent water cascading half a kilometre down the road.

Four units with basements were also affected, with those residents displaced due to their hot water tanks and furnaces suffering damage from the flooding.

Fortunately, the building’s electrical room was spared.

In a statement, the City of Vancouver said crews have completed their repair of the water main, which is believed to have failed due to old age and local ground conditions in the area.

Vancouver has one of the oldest municipal water systems in the country, and with the increased pressure created by intense densification, residents in the area can only hope floods like this don’t become a common occurrence.