Tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents in South Trinidad are now fac­ing at least three days with­out wa­ter in their taps af­ter a steel rack sup­port­ing a ma­jor pipeline broke and col­lapsed in­to the Godineau Riv­er yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred at the Godineau Bridge, Mos­qui­to Creek, South Oropouche, around 2.30 pm. Af­fect­ed ar­eas in­clude Gulf View, Bel Air, Green Acres, La Ro­main, Wood­land, San Fran­cique, Av­o­cat, South Oropouche, Union Hall, Dun­can Vil­lage, Palmiste, Sunkist, Es­per­ance, Debe, parts of Pe­nal, Siparia, Quar­ry Vil­lage, Co­coyea, Pleas­antville, Vista­bel­la, Mara­bel­la and San Fer­nan­do.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) said around 2.30 pm, it was alert­ed to the rup­tured 36” trans­mis­sion main at Godineau Bridge.

“Ear­ly in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed the rack used to sup­port the au­thor­i­ty’s 36” pipeline at South Oropouche, in the vicin­i­ty of the Creek, col­lapsed in­to the riv­er, caus­ing the rup­ture. With­in min­utes, a team was dis­patched to make the area safe, iso­late the sup­ply, analyse the sit­u­a­tion and com­mence re­pairs in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

WASA said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was con­tact­ed for as­sis­tance and as­sured that re­pairs would start as soon as their team as­sessed the sit­u­a­tion.

Based on a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment, how­ev­er, WASA ad­vised that re­pairs may take be­tween 48 to 72 hours. It said it was mo­bil­is­ing all its re­sources in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly to ef­fect re­pairs.

Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique North Coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who was at the site, called on WASA to ex­pe­dite re­pairs, par­tic­u­lar­ly since Di­vali is mere days away.

“This has to be neg­li­gence by WASA that they were not in­spect­ing these fa­cil­i­ties and this struc­ture that is hold­ing up this pipe. As you have seen, the struc­ture that is hold­ing up the pipe col­lapse, tak­ing the pipe with it in­to the riv­er and know­ing ful­ly well that this struc­ture that is hold­ing up the pipe across the riv­er, this is salt wa­ter and the blast from that salt wa­ter se­vere­ly erod­ed the struc­ture, I think if they were in­spect­ing these fa­cil­i­ties and these op­er­a­tions here, this would not have hap­pened to­day. But, as the say­ing goes, you have a gov­ern­ment that is col­laps­ing, so too is the in­fra­struc­ture in the coun­try is col­laps­ing as well,” he lament­ed.

Mayrhoo said while he is aware that ma­jor re­pairs would have to be done, WASA should find a way to re­store sup­ply in the in­ter­im.

“You talk­ing about thou­sands of per­sons af­fect­ed and this is the Holy week for Hin­dus. This is a time when they use a lot of wa­ter to clean their place and clean their premis­es and make prepa­ra­tions for Di­vali and to­day is on­ly Tues­day. I am hop­ing by the next 24 hours, at least a min­i­mum of 48 hours, we could get this con­nect­ed and wa­ter can be re­stored to the res­i­dents in the area,” he said.