No residents were injured, according to D.C. Fire and EMS.

UPDATE (3:45 p.m.): According to D.C. Fire and EMS, firefighters are currently investigating a “busted pipe” under the pavement. It does not appear to be dangerous, but the investigation is still ongoing. We’d avoid the area for a bit while things get cleared up.

As westbound routes across the city go, R Street is often a great choice, but you’ll want to avoid it on your commute home this evening. The 1500 block of R Street NW has been closed most of the day while a Pepco crew is out making emergency repairs, and DDOT confirms it will remain closed through rush hour. Thankfully 15th Street remains open, but drivers should still expect backups and plan to avoid the…

View Manhole fire in a larger map An underground electrical fire appears to be to blame for a plume of heavy smoke rising out of a manhole near the intersection of Warren Street and Wisconsin Ave. NW this afternoon. D.C. Fire/EMS was first alerted to the fire at about 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, when a passerby physically knocked on the door of the Engine 20 fire station, located at 4300 Wisconsin Ave. NW, spokesperson Pete…

On top of the smoking manholes and subsequent road closures, Adams Morgan is now facing a water main break at 17th and Euclid Streets NW. WASA has reported that 100 customers are affected by the outage in the area. No word on whether the underground fire that caused the smoke had any effect on the water main. The good news is that the eastbound lanes of the 1800 Block of Columbia Road NW are open…

AlertDC lets us know that Pepco is on site at 18th Street and Columbia Rd. NW in response to a smoking manhole cover. DDOT spokesperson John Lisle follows up that Columbia Rd. NW has been closed between 18th Street and Kalorama Road as a result of the manhole emergency and smoke, and traffic is being diverted. Pepco, FEMS and the MPD are all on the scene. DDOT says it has also deployed Road Operations Patrol…

There was a manhole explosion at 7th and P St NW this morning, which has caused a subsequent power outage in the surrounding area, from roughly 7th to 10th street along the Rhode Island Ave. corridor. This area includes DCist HQ, which, if you’re a regular reader, you may quickly recognize as having a certain amount of poetic justice. DCist has made something of a cottage industry out of documenting the scourge of terrifying manhole…

In our continuing effort to document the terrifying threat of manhole explosions, a new entry: The Post says that a 30-ft. geyser of white hot steam erupted out of a manhole near the Newseum at about 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Thirty feet! That’s big. No one appears to have been injured. The steam looks to have been the result of a failure of a bypass hose being used while repairs were being made to an…

What’s That You Say? is our roundup of the best comments from last week’s posts. So help us out and keep saying funny, interesting, and weird stuff. We know you can. —— Speaking of weird, in regards to the manhole fire post, Jeffrey has this to say about the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers in our city: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it thousand times: this city needs to launch a fire safety…

UPDATE: NBC4 has their videos stupidly set to play automatically every time you refresh the page, so we moved the embedded video as a courtesy to our readers. If you’d like to see the video, you can follow this link or see it embedded below the fold. Photo above is by Bullneck. DCist has a long and well documented irrational fear of manhole mishaps, so we thought we’d better share the glorious terror of…