Some homes in Cumming were without water Wednesday, and all residents had to do was look to a parking lot and building flooded with it on Tribble Gap Road.

A water main rupture at Woodland Drive and Hudson Street caused water to flow into a brand new office building downhill about 1:30 p.m. June 15, according to Forsyth County Fire Department Division Chief Jason Shivers.

Though no offices have moved in yet, one man was inside and upstairs when water began streaming in.

“It [wasn’t] so deep that it [was] dangerous to wade across. However, there [was] the potential for it to be charged with electricity. There [was] a Georgia Power box that [was] in the water,” Shivers said.

The man remained safe, though stuck, inside and was able to work at his desk while crews monitored the scene.

“We [had] telephone communication with him and his family,” Shivers said.

By the time water flow was cut off at 3 p.m., the entire parking lot and building was flooded with 12-18 inches of red-clay water at its deepest point.

Shivers said the water receded enough about 20 minutes after the water was cut off for the man to leave the building through a side door.

A tanker was brought to the area to supply water due to hydrants that were cut off.

According to Crystal Ledford, a spokeswoman for the city, contractors doing grading work on the property accidentally drug up the pipe while working.

Ledford said eight employees from the city’s utilities department were on scene until about 12:30 a.m. “working to get everything back to normal.”

They had to repair an elbow and other broken parts of the pipe, she said.

There were “spotty outages” throughout the city’s service area due to a lack of water pressure, Ledford said, until about 10 p.m.

“That’s always our first concern,” she said, “is to get water back to everybody as quickly as possible when something like that happens.”