Four days without water

Thousands of people in south London were still without running water today after three mains burst in separate incidents, leaving families queueing for supplies.

More than 6,000 homes in East Dulwich and Peckham were left without water for a fourth day after Victorian pipework became too weak to cope with demand. A small main was repaired last night but engineers are still working on the other two principal sections.

People desperate for water have been reduced to queuing at emergency water tanks with jugs, bottles and buckets. They have been unable to flush their lavatories, cook or wash themselves, their clothes or their dishes. Many have been bathing at friends' houses.

"It's terrible - it's a joke," said Betty Reid, struggling to carry a bucket of water half a mile home from one of the 16 tanks.

"It's awful," said mother of two Kirstie Burgess, 34, from Upland Road. "The loos are revolting. We are all having 'Wet Wipe baths' but the children have got filthy. We've bought 15 bottles of water - it's getting very expensive. I have heard they are handing out bottles of water but I haven't seen it."

"It's like being back in the Dark Ages," added Sarah Grant-Hudson, 33, who has a week-old baby. "It's serious for me because I had a traumatic delivery so I am supposedto be keeping clean but I haven't had a bath for two days.

"It's just the lack of information that annoyed me. Nothing was said for the first two days. We had to keep phoning up and of course you are left on hold for ages."

Primary school teacher Caroline Knight is also feeling the crisis more acutely than some. If she does not drink four litres of water a day she will find herself in hospital on dialysis. "I have had complete bowel, bladder and kidney failure following a spinal injury," she said. Thames Water have been delivering four litres a day to her Hindmans Road home but she has had to queue for her husband and three daughters.

"This is the third time within a year that we have been without water," said the 39-year-old, who found several tanks empty before striking it lucky in Darrell Road. She was given a lift by neighbour Ann Adams, who has cancer. "I'm meant to be putting on weight and instead I've lost a stone carrying all this," said Mrs Adams, 49.

"It was only on Sunday that we got these tanks and every time they are filled up everyone raids them and they run out."

"It's horrible - worse than the war," said Dorothy Cole, 83, who was collecting water in Underhill Road with husband Leonard, 82.

Predictably there was a rush on bottled water. At Pay Less Food & Wine on Lordship Lane owner Jamil Muhammed sold a week's worth of five-litre bottles in a day.

And it was not only at home that people suffered.

Schools, several GP and dental practices and many pubs and restaurants were forced to shut.

Outside the Crystal Palace Tavern a sign read: "No water but we've got beer." Regulars took advantage of the brief opening, but barman Danny Tesering said: "We've been collecting water and when we run out we have to shut. This has cost us £2,500 minimum in takings."

A Thames Water spokeswoman said the situation was "quite rare" and that teams were working overtime to restore supplies.