Floody nightmare in village as burst pipe causes chaos
A road has been closed for a week as engineers work to repair a burst water main which flooded a row of cottages.
Last Wednesday Annette Pantall was asleep in her home at the foot of Farleigh Lane, in East Farleigh, when her burglar alarm sounded at 2am.
When she went downstairs it was to find water slurping about her hallway, which had shorted her electrics and set off the siren.
It was found to be bubbling up through the pavement at the front of the property.
While her first-floor apartment was not too badly affected other than her ground floor lobby, her neighbour was flooded throughout. He has had to move out while it is made habitable again. Within an hour of raising the alarm, South East Water contractors were at the scene. They closed the road over East Farleigh Bridge while they got to work on the repair. The problem turned out to be a 2cm hole in an old Victorian cast-iron water main.
Dr Pantall, a research fellow at the University of Newcastle, said: “I saw the offending pipe; it had rusted through.”
But what South East Water hoped would be a simple fix taking only a few hours soon turned out to be otherwise.
As they filled in one hole after a repair a second leak occurred a few feet down the road. When that was fixed and the workmen went to turn a valve to put the water supply back on, that too started dripping. And on Saturday a third leak sprung up. Network Rail was called in to check the flood had not affected the stability of the nearby level-crossing while a firm called Ideal Response was called in by the water company to renovate the flooded homes.
Residents in the area were left without water for much of Wednesday while the work was carried out, but they were supplied with bottled water.
The road was expected to be open to motorists this week but remained closed when the Kent Messenger went to print. Dr Pantall praised South East Water’s quick response, but was less appreciative of the firm’s “sticking plaster” repair policy. She said: “They have fixed this leak, but the mains here clearly need replacing. This is the fourth burst main we have had in the past 10 years to my knowledge.
“Replacing the mains would undoubtedly require disrupting the level crossing and be very expensive, which I suppose is why they are not doing it.”