The first thing that happened leading up to such a large spill was that at about 6 or 7 in the morning the telephone alarm system crashed and we don't know why. It's operated by the phone company and we are working with them to understand why that happened. The telephone alarm system monitors about 20-plus self-operating pump stations west of the Long Beach Freeway.

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The exact sequence [of events] that occurred here we don't know. Most likely there was some kind of an electrical failure, maybe in the electricity panel, because the backup pump capacity and power should've kicked in and done the work … but the pumps were not receiving electricity and they shut down, and that's when the flooding started.

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When the rupture occurred, the sewage stopped coming out of the other manholes and only through the rupture at 21st Street.

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Basically lakes of sewage were created.

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We did lose possibly as much as two million gallons onto the beaches. We're still doing the estimates on that. We don't know how much could possibly have made it to the ocean. We know some did.

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