A car making its way down San Francisco's curviest street* crashed in to a fire hydrant this afternoon, sending a gush of water in to the air and flooding out basements and garages on the quaint, tourist-drawing block. As the Chronicle reports this afternoon, the late-model Buick made it about halfway down the chicane before swerving in to a fire hydrant around 12:30 p.m. today. The resulting flood took about 40 minutes before firefighters could wrangle stop the deluge.

As one neighbor explained, "If you had a raft, you could have ridden down the street." Which, sounds like it would just be a complete blast, if you ask us, but we can't imagine the neighbors would take kindly to Lombard Street rafting trips. One neighbor, who is also a street gardener on the block explained his frustration after seeing his work literally washed away: "It's always the same people who do this stuff. They come in and treat this street like an amusement park and drive recklessly."

Pop over to SFGate for a gallery of all the soggy vehicular carnage.

*The debate about whether Lombard Street or Vermont Street holds this title is still up for debate.

[Chron]