A CLOUDBURST

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4234, 22 January 1940, Page 5

A CLOUDBURST

WATER SUPPLY CUT’OFF. FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. Not for several years has the municipal water supply been interrupted for twenty-four hours, as was the case during the week-end. The cause was a cloudburst on .Pirongia Mountain, which brought down such? an avalanche of water that the intake at the water supply head works was completely blocked. The interruption occurred at about 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon and there was considerable inconvenience caused in the town and neighbourhood through lack of the customary good supply of water for domestic and other purposes. The borough works staff, under Mr R. H. Close, went up to the head works, to ascertain the cause of the interruption, and they found plentiful evidence of the extent of the trouble. Practically nothing effective could be done owing to the great amount of water that was coming down into the stream that feeds the town supply. Again yesterday Mr Close and his men visited the scene, and though water to a height of about 6ft was running over the lip of the reservoir dam efforts were made to clear the intake. These were only partially successful, and about mid-afternoon sufficient was done to ensure at least a partial supply being given. To-day the men have again gone to the scene, in the hope that the flood waters will have sufficiently subsided to enable the intake to be completely cleared, blit meantime householders should be rather sparing with the use of water.

The heavy rain that fell in Te Awamutu on Sunday afternoon was also experienced on Pirongia, and this rather accentuated the trouble, causing the flood waters to remain a complete obstacle to restoring normancy.