Pensioner left without gas supply for 11 days after burst water main in Sheffield

An 85-year-old woman says it is "shocking" that she has been left without heating and hot water for 11 days in sub-zero temperatures after a water main burst.

Around 2,000 properties in Sheffield lost their gas supply when water inundated the network in the Stannington and Malin Bridge areas on Friday, 2 December.

Engineers from gas company Cadent have restored supplies for most residents.

But by Tuesday morning, 13 December, with temperatures still struggling to rise above freezing, more than 100 homes were still cut off.

Pensioner Shirley Saynor, who has arthritis, is among them. She has been using electric heaters and an electric fire to keep warm.

She said: "It's been shocking. It's my hands and feet I can't get warm. When I get up in the morning I put a scarf around my neck and my gloves on.

"One day I felt really low and I ended up crying. I was sat here on my own."

She said she could have stayed with relatives but she is "independent and I don't like putting people out".

She had not showered since her gas went off, she added.

"It's like the North Pole - it's bitter," she said.

Ms Saynor's neighbour Kirsty Wright has also spent the last 11 days in a house without heating and hot water. She said: "I'm a resilient person but it needs to be sorted. It's the worst time of year. Mentally I can cope, just about, but people are struggling."

She branded Ms Saynor's situation "disgusting" and added: "I'm just thankful that no one has been seriously injured or fallen ill. It's ridiculous."

Cadent’s incident controller Kate Jones said the Malin Bridge area was where most of the water had pooled following the leak, making the recovery operation more protracted. She said: "It is an absolutely terrible event - it's once in a lifetime and I have never seen anything like it. We have had people who have worked with us for 40 years and they have never seen anything like it.

"We're not going away until we've got everybody back on and everybody is safe and sound and warm."

Customers had to self-register to be listed as a priority for help in the event of a problem, she said.

Yorkshire Water, which maintains the affected water main, said it was "sorry" for the ongoing disruption caused by the leak.

In a statement on its website, the company said: "We don’t want any customers to worry about compensation for any costs they’ve had to incur."

Customers can submit a compensation claim via the website.

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