00:00While many homes in the villages of Brenchley, Matfield, Pembry, Horsmunden and the surrounding
00:04areas have today had their water returned, there were still some without water in the
00:08second day of the outage.
00:10At its peak yesterday, the incident had nearly 6,000 homes, businesses and other properties
00:15without water.
00:17But here at one of the supply stations, locals say that despite the great work by those manning
00:21the water stations, it isn't enough to forgive southeast water.
00:24Well, I would like it to have it fixed rather quickly, I can't imagine that in this day
00:30of age we're having these sort of problems, it seems, you know, inimaginable that, you
00:37know, we're running out of water, like, you know, so hopefully it'll be fixed within a
00:42few hours now.
00:43Now, admittedly, it is a different kind of fault, there was an issue with a key water pipe at
00:49the Buell Treatment Works in East Sussex, but for many residents it's simply not good
00:54enough.
00:55And I've been hearing about their frustrations as they've been coming and collecting their
00:58water, especially one woman who's on the priority list, but she didn't have her water delivered
01:03to her.
01:03They're very nice, the people here giving out water and they're generous with it.
01:07I'm registered as a priority user, because of my age, and I haven't had a delivery at home.
01:14And we get little messages from, text messages from Southeast Water saying today's message
01:22was sort of, sorry, those of you that haven't got any water, and if you've got water and
01:28it's white and cloudy, it's not really a problem, don't use it.
01:32And then it ends up saying, thank you for your patience and understanding, and I posted on
01:38our local website this morning, I've got no more patience and I've got no more understanding.
01:43Steve Benton, incident manager for Southeast Water, said, we're sorry to all customers
01:47who have been impacted by no water, intermittent supply or low pressure in Pembry, Matfield,
01:51Brenchley, Hornsmondon and the surrounding areas.
01:54Water has been returning overnight to the majority of the 5,850 properties affected by the burst,
02:00although some isolated issues remain as we continue to refill our network and work to
02:04remove airlocks.
02:05For many, the memories of the previous water issues in West Kent haven't yet faded.
02:09It was only January when outages were hitting Tunbridge Wells and only a few months before
02:13that when we first heard of the problems.
02:15The questions likely to be going through locals' minds are, is this something I have to anticipate,
02:19is it something I have to prepare for and will it happen again?
02:21And with this being yet another outage, the patience of residents is likely running as thin
02:26as the trickles from their taps.
02:28Finn McDermid for Kame TV in Pembry.
Comments