Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Re­pairs to a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) main that rup­tured in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day morn­ing have been com­plet­ed, and wa­ter ser­vice has been re­stored to cus­tomers on Cof­fee and Lord Streets.

Road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works were com­plet­ed yes­ter­day at the site in front of Tiaren Drugs Ltd on Cof­fee Street, near Lord Street. The phar­ma­cy has re­mained closed since the in­ci­dent.

Phar­ma­cy man­ag­er Cur­ron Lum Kin was in­formed of the leak around 1 am on Sun­day. The rup­ture re­sult­ed in the phar­ma­cy’s wood­en floor and base­ment be­ing cov­ered in silt and wa­ter.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lum Kin said he had no com­plaints about WASA’s re­sponse.

“I can’t com­plain,” he said.

How­ev­er, he was yet to as­sess the dam­age to the prop­er­ty.

Lum Kin said he had con­tact­ed a main­te­nance com­pa­ny to be­gin cleanup op­er­a­tions and a con­trac­tor to as­sess the ex­tent of the dam­age to the floor­ing and de­ter­mine whether the sub­struc­ture had been af­fect­ed.

He ex­plained that it was the third such in­ci­dent at the phar­ma­cy in the last few years. Lum Kin said he made a for­mal re­port to WASA and was ad­vised on how to make a claim for com­pen­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, he said an­oth­er ma­jor con­cern was when the phar­ma­cy would be able to re­open.

“I have to try to get back to busi­ness as soon as pos­si­ble,” he said.

Lum Kin said his em­ploy­ees were al­so anx­ious to re­turn to work.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, WASA stat­ed that up­on dis­cov­er­ing the rup­ture around 5 am on Sun­day, the line was iso­lat­ed and a re­pair team was de­ployed.

The Au­thor­i­ty said the dam­aged as­bestos pipe had been re­placed with a full-length 12-inch PVC main and paving works would be sched­uled with ur­gency.

The Au­thor­i­ty thanked res­i­dents for their pa­tience.