A burst main in west London has sent water 60 feet into the air, causing traffic mayhem.
A huge “geyser” sprouted in the middle of the road at Shepherd’s Bush Green on Saturday lunchtime, with Thames Water engineers battling to keep the impromptu fountain under control.
The Standard’s Business Editor, Jonathan Prynn, who witnessed the dramatic leak, described how a “great plume of water” nearly reached the roofline of the Dorsett Hotel, leaving onlookers gauping and holding up traffic.
He explained: “I’ve seen a few bursts in my time but I’ve never seen something as spectacular as that.
“It must be 50 or 60 feet. There’s a massive great hole in the road on Shepherd’s Bush Green. It’s just absolutely pouring out”.
“It’s really spectacular and will cause total mayhem for hours,” he continued.
“The last time I saw something like this in Iceland. I have never seen such a height of water coming out of the streets of London in my life. It’s way above the buses.”
The leak comes at an awkward time for Thames Water, which is due to appear at the High Court in a bid to allow it to restructure the company on Monday to avoid entering special administration.
The utility, which is England’s biggest water company with about 16 million customers, is in about £16bn of debt and needs £3.3bn over the next five years to keep running.
Thames Water is forecast to run out of money and enter special administration by late March if restructuring is not approved.
It owns more than 20,000 miles of water mains and more than 68,000 miles of sewers across London, the Thames Valley and the Home Counties, with approximately 8,000 employees.
A Thames Water spokesperson told the Standard: “At 1pm today a burst on a clean water main was reported to Thames Water Shepherd's Bush Green, W12.
“We promptly attended the site to assess the damage and control the leak and have stemmed the flow of water.
“The leak is [from] clean water and in order to minimise disruption and keep customer’s taps flowing we're checking all the valves that control the flow of water in the area before we start the repair.”
