More than 9000 households were left without water yesterday when a whole town centre was cut off, leaving families to queue for hours for bottled water at the local supermarket.
VIDEO: Cumbernauld's water chaos
More than 9000 households were left without water yesterday when a whole town centre was cut off, leaving families to queue for hours for bottled water at the local supermarket.
Homes in and around Cumbernauld lost their water supply for most of the day when a 30-inch trunk main pipe burst in the early hours in Abronhill.
In chaotic scenes, thousands of homeowners crowded into the town's shopping centre to stock up on bottled water being distributed from the back of trucks by Scottish Water staff.
Crowds of people crammed into the two main supermarkets, Asda and Tesco, which were making the most of the water shortage with staff quickly setting up stalls laden with bottled water near the front doors of the shops.
Water shelves in the usual aisles of the shops quickly cleared despite large bottles of water going for more than £5 and six-packs of Evian selling for £3.50.
Police stationed at the shops directed people to Cumbernauld Medical Centre, where Scottish Water had set up an emergency supply centre to distribute water.
Two lorries laden with bottled water replenished supplies in the centre's car park while police stood guard around the crowds. In the car park, yet more police directed the traffic, which was backed up along the street.
Paul Clarke, 44, found out about the water problem when his girlfriend called him to make sure he picked up supplies.
Mr Clarke, a train driver, said: "Today is the first day of my holidays so it is not a great way to be spending it.
"I think Scottish Water has done a lot to make sure we have drinking water but more could have been done to make sure we had toilets that could flush. It's taking two bottles for one flush and this is my fourth trip out of the house to get water.
"The information has been very confusing. The men at the water station are saying the supply is back on, which it is clearly not, and the helpline is saying it will be a few more hours. It is very frustrating."
By late afternoon, dozens of vans belonging to Scottish Water were dotted around the town centre, filling up blue tanks to be used for flushing toilets.
As the temperature rose to 20C, more and more people turned out to secure as many bottles as they could carry, some wheeling six-packs off in babies' prams, others collecting them in borrowed shopping trolleys.
Jessica Stuart, 29, and her partner Bill Traynor, 31, were at the collection point to stock up on water for their family and Jessica's grandmother.
The couple's second child is due in October and Ms Stuart said she was starting to feel strained under the heat.
She said: "The queues have been catastrophic. I have never seen anything like it, with people pushing in to get water and crowding into the supermarket. It feels like everyone in Cumbernauld has turned out and we are all hot, sweaty and cranky.
"Being pregnant, I'm uncomfortable enough without this as well.
"We are meant to take only two packs of six bottles each but people are somehow managing to take more.
"Scottish Water has done well to set this collection point up, but I would be interested to know what happened to the pipe in the first place."
Engineers worked for 12 hours to get the supply back up and running, finally succeeding in fixing the damaged main at around 6pm.
However, the supply did not resume until several hours later, with residents waiting for the system to recharge before their water came back on.
Customers were warned there might be some discolouration to their supply.
They were advised to run their kitchen taps for a couple of minutes until it ran clear.
A spokesman for Scottish Water said the quick-thinking of engineers in redistributing the network meant only 9000 households were without water rather than the total 30,000 properties the pipe supplies.
Raymond O'Brien, operations manager for Scottish Water, said: "We had the potential for about 30,000 of our customers to be affected but the quick thinking of our engineers reduced that to about 9000. It took us some time to get down to the pipe and repair the it.
"Scottish Water has prided itself recently on reducing the number of these incidents and over the past few years it has certainly reduced dramatically."
