Africa-Press – South-Africa. Rand Water says the maximum length of this week’s planned water outage has increased by several hours, with full restoration now expected on Friday morning rather than Thursday afternoon.
The entity’s spokesperson, Makenosi Maroo, said the original timeframe, up until 15:00 on Thursday, did not factor in downtime and other time-consuming details.
Rand Water will cut supply to several feeder reservoirs, affecting scores of suburbs across Johannesburg on Tuesday evening.
The outage will now last a maximum of 58 hours.
Maroo said she would not call it an “extension” of the outage, just an adjusted timeframe to ensure the entity did not go over time.
She added work would be completed, and water would be back on at Rand Water at 05:00, but that does not mean water would be in residents’ taps at 05:00.
This because the water reticulation, from Rand Water to reservoirs to water towers and residents’ homes, would likely be empty on Friday morning.
Water would need to flow to reservoirs and towers before it starts to flow to residents’ homes and businesses along Johannesburg Water’s 11 000 km of pipeline.
High-lying areas, for example, would get water after low-lying areas because water needs pressure to reach those taps.
And once the water comes back, if residents with water are not careful, they could use the resource faster than it could fill the reservoirs.
Maroo said it could take up to 14 days for some areas to return to normal.
She urged residents to use water sparingly during this time to allow the system to recover faster.
Meanwhile, Johannesburg’s environment and infrastructure services mayoral committee member, Jack Sekwaila, cautioned residents who were heating their homes during the cold snap to be careful.
He said the water shutdown could affect the ability of firefighters to intervene if a fire broke out.
“I have spoken to [fire departments]. Firefighters need to ensure their water tankers are full before the shutdown [because they won’t be able to fill up for the next few days].”
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