Vail, Colo. ? Residents pumped out their homes Monday after a raging creek broke through an underground culvert, sending water into the neighborhood and opening up a 22-foot-wide sinkhole in Colorado’s main east-west highway.

Sandbags and mounds of dirt were piled up around the houses, a mix of condominiums and single-family homes worth up to $1 million, many flooded with several inches of water.

“We were at the grocery store when the water broke,” said Carol Reichman Cook, who returned home to find 6 inches of water in her two-story house. “It came right through our utility room. It came like a total river.”

Crews had pumped out about 200 gallons by midmorning. The damage was confined to the lower floor.

About a mile away, highway crews in front-end loaders and graders diverted water away from the sinkhole on Interstate 70 so they could look for the damaged culvert about 20 feet below. A 24-mile stretch of the highway was closed.

Motorists crawled in bumper-to-bumper traffic along a 54-mile detour that wound mostly on two-lane highways across two mountain passes of 10,000 feet and higher.

“It’s bumper to bumper. We’re not used to that in Iowa,” said Jeanette Leinen, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, who had stopped for gasoline in Minturn, just west of Vail, after completing the detour. She added: “It’s an act of nature. What can you do about that?”

A front-end loader clears dirt from a sinkhole on Interstate 70 east of Vail, Colo. I-70 was closed Sunday after runoff from melting snow undercut the road, forcing motorists to take a 55-mile detour.

Heavy rain merged with melting snow Sunday to send water cascading down Bighorn Creek into the culvert, which broke. The water washed away dirt that supported the interstate, creating the sinkhole, and rushed into the east Vail neighborhood, said Colorado Department of Transportation spokeswoman Stacy Stegman.

Residents of 220 homes were advised to evacuate as the muddy water rushed along streets, rising to about 1 foot deep in some spots. Crews worked through the night to build a berm that diverted water, officials said.

At least two homes suffered structural damage, but no initial damage estimate was available, town planning director Russ Forrest said. Many of the homes are unoccupied second homes.