Waking up in a “river” of water is what some Chistelhurst residents experienced yesterday morning when a main pipe burst and gushed thousands of litres of water into their homes.
Wembley Road neighbours described the water from an underground pipe gushing like a river flowing in their street.
Faizan Ilyas, who lives in an apartment block, was sleeping on the lounge floor on the ground floor unit when woken up by water that had wet the mattress he was sleeping on around 4am yesterday.
“Everything was a mess, my laptop and furniture was ruined,” he said.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the area yesterday, Ilyas’s household goods were outside in the parking space drying, while he was mopping up pools of water.
“I opened the sewer outlet to give relief to the water that just kept coming in and luckily that helped a lot,” Ilyas said.
Buffalo City Metro workers were seen digging a hole to get to the root of the gushing water.
Another resident, Dean Stoltz, who had his driveway chopped up to find the source of the problem, said it was frustrating that his family could not go to school or work as a result.
“Our water supply has luckily not been affected because we are part of Cambridge, but it’s just an inconvenience now that we can’t go anywhere.
“It was unbelievable the amount of water that was gushing out until BCM came out and managed to switch the main supply off,” he said.
Ricardo Gallagher, who also lives in the road, said it looked like a river flowing when he managed to take his kids to school in the morning.
“Apparently it is old pipes that burst and they (BCM) were digging to find the valve,” he said.
BCM spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya said the cause of the pipe burst was aging infrastructure.
“The planned time for fixing of the pipe is this afternoon and it took longer than normal to isolate due to valves being covered by leftover material. There is a pipe replacement programme which the metro runs, and this has been added there in order to ensure that such an incident does not happen again,” he said.
Ngwenya said the burst caused the water outage in various neighbourhoods yesterday, including Vincent, Gonubie and Beacon Bay.
However, water was diverted from alternative supply zones to restore the supply. — oreillya@tisoblackstar.co.za
Burst pipe floods homes causing chaos
Wembley Road neighbours described the water from an underground pipe gushing like a river flowing in their street.
Faizan Ilyas, who lives in an apartment block, was sleeping on the lounge floor on the ground floor unit when woken up by water that had wet the mattress he was sleeping on around 4am yesterday.
“Everything was a mess, my laptop and furniture was ruined,” he said.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the area yesterday, Ilyas’s household goods were outside in the parking space drying, while he was mopping up pools of water.
“I opened the sewer outlet to give relief to the water that just kept coming in and luckily that helped a lot,” Ilyas said.
Buffalo City Metro workers were seen digging a hole to get to the root of the gushing water.
Another resident, Dean Stoltz, who had his driveway chopped up to find the source of the problem, said it was frustrating that his family could not go to school or work as a result.
“Our water supply has luckily not been affected because we are part of Cambridge, but it’s just an inconvenience now that we can’t go anywhere.
“It was unbelievable the amount of water that was gushing out until BCM came out and managed to switch the main supply off,” he said.
Ricardo Gallagher, who also lives in the road, said it looked like a river flowing when he managed to take his kids to school in the morning.
“Apparently it is old pipes that burst and they (BCM) were digging to find the valve,” he said.
BCM spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya said the cause of the pipe burst was aging infrastructure.
“The planned time for fixing of the pipe is this afternoon and it took longer than normal to isolate due to valves being covered by leftover material. There is a pipe replacement programme which the metro runs, and this has been added there in order to ensure that such an incident does not happen again,” he said.
Ngwenya said the burst caused the water outage in various neighbourhoods yesterday, including Vincent, Gonubie and Beacon Bay.
However, water was diverted from alternative supply zones to restore the supply. — oreillya@tisoblackstar.co.za
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