A NUMBER OF businesses in and around Bridgetown were forced to close early today following the rupture of a 15-inch main in Roebuck Street, where main replacement work in ongoing.
The disruption in the water supply affected law courts, stores, salons, restaurants, offices, media houses and call centres.
Areas on the outskirts of The City like Fontabelle and Passage Road were also affected.
Communications specialist at BWA Joy Ann Haigh went on air to address rising concerns but could not give an exact time when the problem would be fixed.
“I won’t be able to give you a specific time but I can tell you that a 15 inch main does take a few hours and we are out there doing everything we can to get it fixed as soon as possible,” she said.
At Cave Shepherd, location manager Andrew Wilkinson said had the water problems prevented the restaurants there from serving breakfast or lunch. However, he said the retail section remained opened and serviced by water tanks.
Martin Bryan at Woolworth store said the store had water tanks which were installed several years ago. He was hoping to have normal service restored shortly since closing early affected revenue.
The Paradise Restaurant and De Office Cafe & Bar were closed for the day after operators were informed the water would be off.
“Friday is usually a very busy day and we were left without water. [Tanks] is something we definitely will have to look into for the future,” said Sherryann Barker, manager of the restaurant and beauty business.
Health inspectors sprang into action and one said that they were out ensuring that there would be no health hazards or nuisances during the outage.
Meanwhile, some shoppers felt the water outage was a serious blow to businesses especially the restaurants and beauty salons.
It was reported that one salon customer had to be put in a taxi and sent to another location to have her hair relaxer completed.
