Well, this was weird.

A bright summer day in Pittsburgh - and the city's River Rescue team is scrambling down into the basement of a Downtown building making sure that no one is in danger from rising water.

Usually, these emergency service workers are out on our three rivers. Sometimes, on the rare occasions when Mother Nature throws a nasty thaw at us, there's some flooding that brings them ashore.

But today their inflatable rafts were sitting outside Gateway Center, Downtown, as men in wetsuits waded into parking garages flooded by the massive water main break under Fort Duquesne Boulevard.

Mark Bocian, River Rescue assistant chief since 2003, said it was unusual, but necessary. His team of emergency medical workers were trained for this type of effort and responded quickly and efficiently.

"Fortunately, we haven't seen anything that has been a danger," he said, standing outside 1 Gateway Center, coordinating his crew.

One of Bocian's men emerged from the flooded garage with a status report. There was a parking attendant down there, but he was safe and he was keeping an eye on everything. But there also was a couple of curious thrill-seekers who had found a stairwell leading into the rising tide.

The fellow in the large rubber suit assured his boss that he was on his way to find the stairwell, follow it to the top, and either lock the door or post it as off-limits.

"Good," Bocian nodded. "I don't want anyone going down there."

At 2 p.m., the situation, although messy, was under control. City workers were in position to stop the rush of water and vehicles that were blocking their efforts were being towed away. Massive digging machines were grinding their way across concrete medians to the buckled sidewalk, and men in waders - and some without - were knee-deep in water, lifting up manhole covers and preparing to burrow beneath the street where the break occurred.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Just leaving the parking garage was like swimming upstream. Click photo for larger image.

Standing amid the crowd of on-lookers leaning on the railing near the rushing water were Garret Drexler, 19, of Mt. Lebanon, and his girlfriend, Kelsey Scram, 18, of Hickory, Washington County. The couple, who had met as skiing instructors at Seven Springs, came Downtown to buy a gift certificate from Palomino's restaurant. And to get a glimpse of the goings-on at the Gateway Center water park.

"I just think it's wild to watch, especially down in the parking garage," Drexler said. "It's so strange to just think that you'd have to think about your car being flooded in a garage.

"And it keeps flowing. It's not like it's a big puddle. . . . It just keeps coming and coming."

"It's so much bigger than I expected," Scram said.

I suppose there are worse ways to spend a summer day. As long as one of the cars being flooded wasn't yours, it was kind of neat to watch. It's not something you see every day.

"I'm disappointed because I worked in Gateway 2 for most of the summer," Drexler said, "and had this happened a month and a half ago, it would have been like the best day of work ever."

That didn't seem to be the sentiment of the workers who were evacuated from the affected buildings, some of whom were munching on sandwiches and sipping from cartons of iced tea. Nearby, the Salvation Army had set up its white van providing refreshments to the emergency workers who had responded.

The biggest buzz, however, seemed to be from the news media, members of whom were zipping back and forth - cameras, microphones, cell phones and notebooks in hand - covering this breaking story of a broken water main from every possible angle short of 20,000 leagues under the city. Still, I have to report that they were all polite and friendly to everyone - even their competition. Especially KDKA, which had the good fortune of hosting the story in its own back yard.

"We were listening to the radio on the way down and the guys on the air were complaining that their cars were the ones in the flooded basement," Drexler.

Scram, who intends to major in journalism when she starts school at Syracuse University next month, was taken with the air of excitement.

"It looks awesome," she said. "I can't wait to start doing this."

Yeah, it isn't your everyday job.