Anne Johnston, owner of Campus Florist on Green Street, said she stopped by her store around noon on Monday, thinking she was just making a quick visit to feed her cat, Stevie J. Instead, she found the basement flooded up to the 14-foot ceiling.

“Everything was floating up the stairs,” Johnston said.

Many business owners on the 600 block of Green Street spent their Labor Day holiday cleaning up water damage after a fire service line under one of the businesses on the south side of the block sprung a leak, according to Brent O’Neill, network operations manager for Illinois-American Water Company.

Fire service lines supply water to sprinklers and other fire safety measures. From the early afternoon to 5:30 p.m., one part of the street was closed off as crews dug through the concrete to find the problem. Around 5:30 p.m., the main water lines were turned back on.

O’Neill said it is not the responsibility of the water company, but of an individual business to have the fire service line repaired, and it is uncertain which business sits atop the broken line.

Water came up from the floor and flooded the basements of Jimmy John’s, Hometown Pantry and Campus Florist.

Johnston said stuffed animals, pots, ribbons and other fall merchandise were in the basement. Since electricity also had to be shut down, the refrigerators for the flowers were turned off, which prompted Johnson to have a “1/2 price flood sale.”

Jignesh Panchal, general manager of the Hometown Pantry on the corner of Green and Sixth streets, said the water was up to his knees inside the store.

“We have to throw away a lot of things,” Panchal said. “We ordered a lot of stuff because college is just starting.”

Brady An, store manager of Electronics Boutique, said the water came “gushing out the doors” of the businesses and flooded Green Street momentarily.

“It was just pouring out like Niagara Falls,” Johnston said. Johnston said people on the street were slipping and sliding for a little while.

Kate Gruve, a sanitarian for the Public Health Department, was also enjoying her day off until she was called into work. Gruve had to close all of the restaurants on the block, even those that were not directly affected by the water damage.

“They all did a nice job closing down,” Gruve said. “They all closed really quickly.”

Varong Hadsarang, co-owner and manager of Sukhothai Cafe, said his restaurant had no water damage but had to close. Hadsarang said customers came by to see if they were open, peering through the windows and pulling on the door handle.

This is the second time their business has been closed since its opening this summer. Businesses on Green Street were closed on July 13 during the power outage caused by summer storms.

Hadsarang said he feels bad for his neighbors on the block and that the fire service line leak is an accident that no one could have expected.

“I don’t blame anyone,” Hadsarang said.

Johnston said at this point it’s hard to assess how much she has lost. Panchal and Johnston said they are more worried about the clean-up process to get up and running again.

“We can’t do it in two days, that’s a certainty,” Johnston said.