Mexico City extends massive water outage by 40 hours

Authorities in Mexico City said on Monday they had to extend a massive water outage that has affected millions of people for five days by another 40 hours because of an infrastructure glitch.

The main water system that supplies the sprawling capital of 20 million people was shut off on October 31 to make what officials say are vital upgrades to the network.

And because it will take time to pump water back into the pipes, full service is now not expected to be restored until Tuesday or Wednesday, authorities said.

“We’re looking at eight days [without water] now. We had never had such a major outage in the city,” said Mayor Jose Ramon Amieva.

The water outage has affected 4 million people in Mexico City itself and another three million in the suburbs.

The National Water Commission (Conagua) is changing enormous sections of pipes and other infrastructure in the Cutzamala hydraulic system, which pumps water 500 meters above the city to provide the pressure that delivers it across the capital.

Officials had turned the pumps back on Sunday, but had to turn them off again when a giant piece of tubing known as an “inverted K” came loose, they said.

They are soldering more metal into place around it to avoid “major damage to the structure,” Conagua said in a statement.

As the water outage continued, police could be seen standing guard at massive blue cisterns of emergency water that have been set up in neighborhoods most prone to scarcity.

The water crunch is set to get worse this week as many residents return home from holiday weekends outside the city for Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival.

“Now we’re facing the most difficult moment, hoping the maintenance work will be finished soon,” Amieva told TV network Televisa.