Thursday October 19 was thirst day as the mains supply to Rye and Camber was switched off by Southern Water, which was attending to a burst water main in Brede that had been discovered early that morning. The water company said that 2500 people were affected.
Residents’ first intimation of the problem in most cases was when they turned on their taps to find nothing coming out. The people of Military Road where I live, opened their doors and consulted their neighbours to find out how localized the problem was, one rang the water company. Then, news travelled by word of mouth – there would be updates on the website, the supply would probably take about three hours to restore.
Four hours later, there was nothing at all on the website (not even a note of the fault), and still no water, so I decided to ring up. This was complicated by me having completely lost my voice. I can only hiss in a painful and menacing manner. But I had a thirsty cat to pacify so there was no choice.
After a long queue I was able to whisper at a patient and polite gentleman who was able to give me more information about the precise nature of the fault but couldn’t give me any idea of when the problem would be solved. He did tell me that emergency water supplies might be available later on. He said that all this information would be on the website. I pointed out that there was no mention of the problem at all on the website at this stage even though we had been without water for four hours. He didn’t believe me, but then checked himself and agreed that it was rather surprising.
Shortly after, the website was updated and it noted that emergency supplies would be available for pick up and that we should check back later to find out where and when.
But then an astonishingly useful thing happened! A text pinged at 4pm exactly, I opened it to find a message from Southern Water telling me where the Rye and Camber pick up points were for emergency supplies. How efficient! After checking in with neighbours, I rushed along to the Rye Creative Centre where a giant van was distributing 12 litres of water to all comers. It was causing a bit of traffic chaos as there were a lot of cars parking up, pedestrians crossing the roads and the usual HGVs thundering along having dropped off micro loads to High Street shops. But everyone was friendly and patient. A helpful lady told me that they expected the mains supply to be on by about 8pm.
I just wondered why Southern couldn’t have alerted us to the mains going off in the first place by text as this would have saved it lot of time dealing with repeated callers about the same thing. They clearly have the technology and it worked. Of course not everyone has a mobile phone or has given the number to Southern Water. But surely if those that do and have could receive updates by text, this would save time and trouble for everyone, including shorter queues on the phone for those people who need to call?
Photo: Seana Lanigan
Sadly the real situation, as at 10.30am on Friday 20th, is a clear over-estimate from Southern Water of their capacity to resolve the situation. No mains water and, worse, no water at New Road either. Southern Water tweeting that it will be another 2 hours before they have further supplies available. Very poor show.
All you whingers can move to Africa, where in some places you have to trek miles with a bucket to collect the days drinking water.