A broken water main flooded a busy stretch of Washington Street in Chinatown on Friday morning, damaging many restaurants and businesses in the area and likely forcing some to shut down for days.

A 12-inch main, originally installed in 1904 and relined in 2000, burst near the intersection of Washington and Kneeland streets around 5:30 a.m., the Boston Water and Sewer Commission said.

The flooding affected about a block and a half of Washington Street near Tufts Medical Center, with overflow onto surrounding streets. The flow of water was halted around 8:30 a.m.

Jeric Wang, who manages the Jia Ho Supermarket and Emperor’s Garden Restaurant on Washington Street, said he will have to shut down operations for three to five days to restock food and other items damaged by the flooding, including a refrigerator.

“The same problem happened a couple years ago,” said Wang, 40. “Same problem, same area.”

Michael Weiss said got a call at 5:30 a.m. saying to a call saying his entire restaurant, Jaho, had flooded, just as it had a few years ago after a main break in nearly the identical location.

”I thought I was dreaming,” Weiss said. “Like there’s no way. Deja vu. As a small business owner, constantly having challenges you have to deal with, from the pandemic to everything else, it’s frustrating and you don’t know if things are being done to improve stuff.”

Officials said they are working to determine what caused the main break. On Thursday afternoon, crews had searched for leaks in the same area, said Tom Bagley, a spokesman for the water commission, but it wasn’t clear if the two events were related.

Mayor Michelle Wu said service had been restored but would periodically come offline as crews conduct “critical repairs.”

“This is a city with infrastructure that is quite historic in a lot of places, and we need to be focusing on how we can update and maintain all that infrastructure because it affects people’s daily lives,” Wu told reporters at an unrelated event. “And so we are working closely with utilities to get the bottom of what happened and make sure that we can update our infrastructure everywhere.”

It was the third major water main break in recent weeks. Earlier this month, one caused significant street damage in South Boston, and in August, a main break created a sinkhole that swallowed a car in the South End.

City Council President Ed Flynn, who represents Chinatown, said that his office was working with the commission along with affected residents and businesses.

“Our water and sewer system is critical in ensuring not only the cleanliness of our water supply, but also the public health and safety of our residents,” he said. “We need to invest city, state and federal resources in improving this aging infrastructure.”

On Washington Street, Ziad Odeh, 63, said his pizza shop had 2 to 3 feet of water in the basement and a couple of inches on the main floor. All of the chairs were on the tables so he and his employees could mop the floor.

Odeh had put on black rain boots for the unfortunate chore.

”There’s a lot of cleaning up to do but, you know, we’re working on it,” Odeh said. “We definitely have to get a company to go down and pump all that water from the basement, but it comes with the territory.”

Odeh said he hoped he can reopen by the end of the day.

”Hopefully we can tonight because I see there’s no more water on the street there,” he said. “We’ll take it one minute at a time and we’ll see how that goes.”

Vinh Chung, however, won’t be able to open his watch repair shop on Washington Street for a few days, he said. When he arrived at 9 a.m., the entire floor was soaked.

“I opened the door, and I saw it,” Chung said, as he squeezed out a saturated rug in front of the door.

An excavator on Washington Street outside of the restaurant Pho Pasteur was scooping up mud from the street for disposal, and city officials were assessing damage and visiting affected stores and restaurants.

Richard Kiley, who lives on the 16th floor of a high-rise condominium on Nassau Street, said his water had been off since about 5 p.m. Thursday and the building had exhausted its reserve water supply.

He said he had been extremely frustrated by the lack of updates from the commission. With no water, he can’t cook or take a shower, and everything around him is closed, he said.

“Given all that’s happening, I expect a bit more information,” said Kiley, 61, who has lived in the building for 15 years.

Sandy Duong was sweeping mud from her jewelry store on Washington Street. The owner of Kim Hoàn Jewelry, Duong said she had not heard from the city yet and opened her door to reveal the flooding damage.

She had no hard feelings though.

”It was an accident,” Duong said with a shrug.

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Matt Yan can be reached at matt.yan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @matt_yan12. Bailey Allen can be reached at bailey.allen@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @baileyaallen.

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