An accidental fountain erupted out of an Oak Harbor hillside overlooking Wal-Mart last Saturday, creating a considerable mess.

Rich Tyhuis, the operations manager for streets and water, said the accident was caused by a combination of wet weather and road construction work on the de-forested hillside.

As a housing project goes in, the city is in the process of extending Barrington Drive to create a transportation link that could serve as an alternative to the highway.

Tyhuis explained that the construction work exposed the eight-inch, underground water main which comes to an end at the top of the hill. The concrete block at the end of the pipe, which keeps the cap on, moved because of the soggy, loose soil and allowed the cap to fall off.

The result was a giant spray of water into the air at around 2 p.m.

Tyhuis said the Oak Harbor Fire Department turned off the water, which left four homes without water service for about three hours as a public works crew put a temporary patch on the pipe.

But the large amount of water that flowed down the half-completed road caused trouble.

“It caused a lot of erosion,” Tyhuis said, “and washed rock all the way down onto Erie Street.”

Tyhuis said workers had to clean quite a bit of gravel off the road at the intersection of Barrington and Erie streets.

You can reach News-Times reporter Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.