3:46am UK, Sunday January 02, 2011
More than 60,000 homes in Northern Ireland were left without water overnight after engineers temporarily cut off supplies to allow depleted reservoirs to refill.
Many families have been without running water since Christmas
The homes were put on a rotating on/off supply for 12 hours.
Around 2,600 houses are still without any supply at all in the province, despite more than 2,500 being reconnected yesterday.
Underfire Northern Ireland Water said it had hoped to end rotation by Saturday but was unable to do so.
Vandals were blamed for emptying out almost 5,000 gallons of water from temporary tanks in one of the badly hit areas in Coalisland, Co Tyrone.
Away from Coalisland, the areas worst affected by the water failures are Cookstown, Co Tyrone, Hannahstown near Belfast, and Burren and Warrenpoint in Co Down.
Arctic weather conditions, followed by a sudden thaw, caused large numbers of burst pipes in buildings and in the mains supply, draining unprecedented amounts of water from the system.
Louth County Council in the Republic of Ireland has agreed to supply water from its treatment plant in Dundalk to its neighbouring local authority across the border in Newry and Mourne.
The Scottish Executive is continuing to supply Northern Ireland with thousands of litres of bottled water to help cope with the crisis.
:: Click here for a list of emergency water supply venues in Belfast.
While NI Water has responsibility for leaking pipes on the main system, that responsibility ends when the supply enters properties.
However, many of the leaks are understood to be within unoccupied homes and businesses.
"NI Water would reiterate its appeal to customers to check their premises for any damage to pipes and repair these as soon as possible," said the NIW spokesman.
Stormont's Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy yesterday announced that an independent probe is to examine the causes of the crisis.
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