Jul. 7--PROVINCETOWN -- It couldn't have happened on a worse weekend -- July Fourth -- for this fishing village-turned-tourist mecca.

Raw sewage ran like "a river" along Commercial Street, gurgling and bubbling up from underground holding tanks.

Guests at expensive inns were told to ease up on showers and toilet flushing.

Dogs and kids padded unaware on patches of ground wet from sewer overflows, and health officers shut down harbor beaches.

Yesterday evening, sewer workers identified and fixed a critical break in the town's $16.5 million wastewater vacuum system: a palm-size hole in a pipe under Dyer Street that caused a chaotic three days of searching along waterfront streets to find the puncture.

But for restaurant, lodging and shop owners who -- on a hot and popular weekend -- weathered the smell, the sewage in basements, the dripping pipes and the need to buy a lot of bleach, the damage was both immediate and a concern for the future.

"This could kill us," Provincetown store owner Eric Peterson said yesterday of worries that tourists will stay away in the coming weeks after news the sewer system was on the fritz.

Pressure drop

At around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, an alarm on the downtown wastewater vacuum system alerted sewer workers to a drop in the vacuum pressure necessary to keep the system working properly, town officials said.

And while sewer workers immediately began looking for a hole or break in a pipe that would explain the pressure loss, the presence of upwards of 50,000 people in town and a noontime July 4 parade stymied their efforts, according to sewer officials.

Sewer workers normally have about a two- to three-hour window to find leaks in the vacuum before the pipes and pumping mechanisms begin to be overwhelmed by wastewater, given normal use. But that window gets smaller when more people are flushing toilets and taking showers, said one town official.

By early evening on Saturday, sewer workers were dealing with underground tank overflows onto the street and in houses -- and no identifiable leak -- to the point that Town Manager Sharon Lynn had a sewage backup at her home, which is how she learned about the townwide problem.

"I found out about it because there was a failure at my own property," Lynn said yesterday at an emergency public meeting.