SCORES of people were plunged into chaos when a water pipe leaked, leaving parts of Runcorn Old Town suffering a drought for three days.

Residents, pub landlords, funeral directors, hairdressers and shops were all affected along High Street, Bridge Street and Dukesfield in Runcorn when the main water supply was cut off on Thursday morning.

But despite the problem being swiftly reported to United Utilities, the water giant is being accused of failing to take action until Saturday evening - leaving a number of people feeling 'distressed' and 'abandoned.'

Sheila Hall, landlady at the Waterloo Hotel in High Street, had to fill up buckets of water from the Bridgewater Canal, just to flush the customer toilets.

And when United Utilities eventually switched the water back on at the weekend, Sheila had already complained 13 times and had been considering closing the pub.

Further down the road at High Street Barbers, staff were having to wash customers' hair using water reserves in plastic lemonade bottles for fear of losing more business.

Meanwhile, a local funeral directors had to over-compensate for the problem by buying in two gallons of bottled water for hygiene purposes.

Gretta Rigby, of Davis McMullan funeral directors in High Street, said: 'We ended up using bottled water and, of course, we desperately need water here for obvious reasons.

'I asked United Utilities on Thursday evening for a water tender and they said they would provide one and then announce it, but I wasn't aware of anything.

'We had no water and considering we're a funeral directors it was very unhygienic.

'It finally came on again some time on Saturday, but it's just not good enough as by Friday I was fed up.

'And when you try to ring up to complain it's difficult to get past the answering machine, and passed on to a human being.'

But the crisis didn't stop there, as apart from flushing toilets with the help of the canal, Sheila, the Waterloo's landlady, also faced three days without being able to wash her glasses.

It was a struggle asking people to recycle their glass, while dealing with complaints and providing water for customers staying overnight in the nine rooms at the hotel.

But Sheila, of Beechwood, says she couldn't have managed it without the kind help of her customers and staff.

She said: 'I can't thank the staff enough for all their hard work and support as it has been difficult, and the customers all understood once they could see we were doing our best.

'The staff were all working behind on Saturday once the water was eventually back on, as they were having to wash up three days of glasses, and of course it's a health and safety issue.

'We were all being kept thin as well, running up and down the stairs to provide people with enough bottled water to make a tea or coffee!

'I am very upset with the water board as it was off for three days and caused a great deal of inconvenience.'

But despite complaints from a large number of people, parts of the Old

Town remained unaffected, including the Devonshire Diner, which is only doors down from the Waterloo, and the accountancy office.

Karren Shaw, who works at the Devonshire Diner and lives in Queen Street, said: 'We weren't affected at the diner but our water at home was turned off, but only for a day.

'If it had been any longer it would have caused me a great deal of inconvenience.'

Keith Howard, the manager of The Masonic, said: 'We were affected the whole of Thursday and by 9.30pm when it came back on again we were considering closing.'

A spokesman for United Utilities said: 'We are sorry to hear about the problems some of our customers in Runcorn experienced last week and apologise to anyone who was inconvenienced.

'Our team of engineers tried as quickly as possible to fix five burst water mains in the Bridge Street area of Runcorn between Wednesday and Saturday last week.

'The problem was caused by the Victorian cast-iron water mains being unable to deal with a sudden heavy flow of water. We are currently replacing the old water mains on a part of Bridgewater Street with modern, plastic pipes and hope to replace the entire network in this part of Runcorn next year.

'Around 1,000 customers were affected over the four days in the Bridge Street, Bridgewater Street and Wellington Street area.'