San Fernando pipeline rupture floods pharmacy

An­oth­er ma­jor wa­ter pipeline rup­ture in San Fer­nan­do left one busi­ness­man count­ing his loss­es yes­ter­day.

The leak oc­curred on Cof­fee Street, near Lord Street, in front of Tiaren Drugs Ltd, some­time af­ter mid­night.

Man­ag­er Cur­ron Lum Kin said he was told there was a leak, but he was not pre­pared for what he saw.

“When I ar­rived, I saw, I don’t know how to ex­plain that, a mas­sive leak tak­ing place here, a lot of wa­ter just stream­ing every­where.”

He said the base­ment was flood­ed with about two feet of wa­ter, while the phar­ma­cy’s wood­en floor was cov­ered in silt and wa­ter.

“I don’t know it is go­ing to af­fect me, but I would be af­fect­ed be­cause we al­ready have some dam­age in­side from all the wa­ter in­tru­sion.”

Lum Kin was yet to ful­ly as­sess the dam­age to the premis­es.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said he was in­formed about the leak by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

How­ev­er, he said there had been sev­er­al leaks in the south­ern city over the past few days.

“The wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture in San Fer­nan­do re­mains amongst the old­est in the coun­try, so with this ma­jor heat wave that we’ve been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, there have been a num­ber of wa­ter main blowouts through­out the en­tire city. For the last week, WASA has been con­cen­trat­ing pri­mar­i­ly on Cof­fee Street, where there were some se­ri­ous is­sues and they are work­ing on it at this time.”

Re­gard­ing yes­ter­day’s blowout, he said WASA had as­sured him that it had put all con­tin­gen­cies in place to en­sure a sup­ply of wa­ter to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

He said WASA in­di­cat­ed that re­pairs would have been com­plet­ed last evening and that it would work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure a prop­er sup­ply of wa­ter was re­stored.

He thanked WASA for its con­tin­ued re­sponse and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which al­lowed him to keep res­i­dents abreast of its progress.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed WASA for a com­ment, but none was forth­com­ing up to press time.