Late this afternoon, a break in a large-diameter watermain in Henderson Valley caused a water outage to parts of west Auckland. In the past few hours, service has been restored to homes and businesses in Glendene and Henderson after Watercare reconfigured its network.

The remaining suburbs affected are: Henderson Valley, Glen Eden, Kaurilands, Sunnyvale and Oratia.

Watercare chief operations officer Mark Bourne says: “By reconfiguring our network, we were able to restore water to several suburbs. We believe up to 3000 people are without water, and there are others experiencing low water pressure.

“At this stage, we expect to have repaired the broken pipe by early tomorrow morning. Our team will then need to remove air from the pipe and flush the network. This is a critical process that can’t be rushed – it could take up to 12 hours before water is fully restored.

“We have called all customers in the impacted area who require priority assistance or who carry out home dialysis. We have also phoned all aged care facilities to ensure their needs are met.

“We have four tankers supplying free emergency water to people. The locations are listed on our website. People will need to bring clean bottles, buckets or containers to collect water for drinking or hygiene purposes.”

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