Thousands in the seaside town of Conwy have woken up to no running water. (Image: Getty)
A burst of water in a has left 40,000 people without access to water, including 5,000 vulnerable residents.
Locals in the northern town of Conwy have resorted to desperate measures after warned that repairs were taking “more time than planned”.
“Major disaster here in the Conwy area,” one social media user wrote last night. “Utter carnage and chaos [as] people panic bought bottles of water due to the massive burst water pipe affecting thousands of homes”.
Another described the hunt for bottled water as “like a Mad Max film”, sharing their plans to make a 90-mile round-trip in search of , while others rushed to the coast to fill buckets with seawater to flush their toilets.
The outage, based at a water treatment works in the village of Dolgarrog, saw over 20 schools and several businesses closed yesterday. At its peak on Thursday, the issue was impacting 40,000 homes in Wales—a number that is thought to have dropped to around 8,000 today.
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40,000 people were cut off from running water on Thursday. (Image: Getty)
“This is a serious incident both in terms of the complexity of the repair, number of people impacted and has been compounded by difficulties sourcing bulk supplies of bottled water,” Labour MP Claire Hughes said.
Ms Hughes reassured residents on social media that she would ask “serious questions” of Welsh Water about the rapid escalation of the situation, which one person said showed “how unprepared we are for a crisis”.
“Restoring the water main that has burst in … Dolgarrog is taking more time than planned,” a spokesperson for Welsh Water said.
They added that the project was being hampered by the burst main’s location two-and-half metres underneath the riverbed, making repair work “extremely difficult”.
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Once fixed, it could take up to 48 hours for water to return to the thousands of homes across Wales impacted, the spokesperson warned, adding that bottled water stations would open nationwide today and apologising for the inconvenience caused.
Councillor Cheryl Carlisle said workers were having to “dam the river” Ddu to facilitate pipe repairs following a meeting with the water supplier on Thursday, describing it as an “extremely dangerous situation [which] will not be resolved anytime soon”.
“Shops locally are now sold out of bottled water due to panic buying, which is very unhelpful to our vulnerable residents,” she added. “Please conserve whatever water you currently have and look after any elderly and vulnerable neighbours and residents.”