Mother’s nightmare after water runs dry in Olympic Village flat on hottest day of the year

A mother was ‘cut off from water’ for more than ten hours in an East London tower on the hottest day of the year.

Rebecca Monero, 36, says her two children had no access to running water and were left without emergency water supplies, as temperatures hit 34°C in Saturday’s heatwave.

Her kids, 13 and 9, fought to keep cool inside Kotata House, in East Village, formerly the 2012 Olympic Village.

The communications officer said Southern Housing, who jointly own her landlord Triathlon Homes, ‘couldn’t care less’.

She told Metro: ‘I am utterly dumbfounded by the lack of urgency shown by Southern Housing.

‘They do not care about their residents or our basic needs.

‘We spent the hottest day of the year without any water – it was just so hot.’

Water supply first dropped off around midday on Saturday morning as Rebecca and her family looked for shelter from the blistering sun.

After Thames Water confirmed the problem was not on their end, she complained to Southern Housing.

Rebecca felt relieved when an engineer arrived to explain that a power cut affecting the building, sparking multiple complaints.

As the afternoon stretched on, she was promised Southern Housing would arrange a water drop to her door.

But a few hours later, water still hadn’t been delivered to their flat and they had run out of their water supplies in the fridge.

The mum said of the ordeal: ‘I’ve got two kids, we needed water.

‘And there are plenty of families within my building with babies, and the elderly. We just need water. My children struggled.’

Rebecca claimed Southern Housing told her they couldn’t drop any water off because they couldn’t locate their plumber.

She added: ‘The call handler said, “Oh yeah, I can see they tried to call him a couple of hours ago, but he didn’t answer.”

‘He put me on hold for a little while and said, “I’ve just tried to call the plumber and his phone’s switched off.”‘

Finally, by 10pm after the family had spent the hottest afternoon of the year without water – it was delivered.

But Rebecca said she was told to get it herself with only one security guard in the lobby.

‘I’m at home with two children, there was no way that I could get to the office to pick it up,’ she told Metro.

After struggling to sleep in the stifling heat for hours, the family realised water had finally returned at 2.30am on Sunday morning, more than 14 hours since their last drop.

Rebecca said: ‘There was no update or contact from them. It was me doing all the chasing.

‘None of us were able to have a cool shower before bed, none of us slept.

‘It was a nightmare.’

Temperatures peaked yesterday during the day’s long heatwave, with highs of 34°C, below the June record of 35.6°C in 1976.

A spokesperson for Southern Housing stated: ‘We’re sorry residents weren’t kept fully updated while the water was restored. We’re looking into how this happened with our contractors.

‘We understand this was upsetting for residents and we’re keen to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

‘Bottled water was made available to residents following the issue which affected the mains water supply to the building on Saturday afternoon (21 June).

‘Engineers worked through the night and the water was fully restored in the early hours of Sunday morning (22 June).’

UK Power Network told Metro that their control reported this fault was on a private network.

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