A large water pipe burst on Wednesday in Istanbul’s Başakşehir district in a leafy roadside location, astounding drivers before it turned into a plight for them as the high volume of water quickly inundated the busy road.
What’s more, the eruption left the entire district of Esenyurt, the city’s most populated district where more than 977,000 people live, without water. Water shortages were also reported in two neighborhoods of Başakşehir, three neighborhoods of Arnavutköy and five neighborhoods of Avcılar on the European side of the city.
The incident came one day after Istanbul Water and Sewage Administration (ISKI) crews ran maintenance work on the pipeline after a flow problem. The water supply was resumed but according to media reports, a glitch in a valve caused an eruption on Wednesday morning, sending an enormous column of water, reaching some 10 meters (33 feet) in height, into the air. ISKI crews were dispatched to the scene to cut off the water flow while locals complained they had intervened too late.
“The traffic came to a halt here. We are stuck here for two hours, yet, they could not stop the flow,” Fevzi Yavuz, a motorist in a long line of vehicles struggling to navigate an inundated road, told Demirören News Agency (DHA).
Critics of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) were quick to blame the municipality for the incident. Murat Türkyılmaz, a municipality council member from the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) joked on his social media account that the IBB “made the difficult possible by giving an artificial rainbow to the city,” sharing a video of the water with a small rainbow arching over the uncontrolled flow. On a more serious note, he tweeted that the municipality would charge Istanbulites for their “failure” and would likely seek to increase the water utility fees in the next board meeting of ISKI. Last month, the municipality hiked water fees by 29%.
Elsewhere, the city suffered water shortages due to problems in water supply lines that affected two neighborhoods of Üsküdar, Maltepe and Ümraniye on the Asian side. On the European side, several neighborhoods in Eyüpsultan, Fatih and Çatalca were hit by shortages for hours on Wednesday, again, due to glitches in the water grid.
