VietNamNet Bridge – The pipe carrying safe water from Da River to Hanoi’s city center broke again on Tuesday night for the seventh time, affecting hundreds of thousands of Hanoians. However, repair was completed within one day.

An officer of the Safe Water Investment and Trading Company (Viwaco) said the incident occurred at 9pm on June 17 on Thang Long Boulevard, the section crossing Thach That district, Hanoi.

After nearly 10 hours of digging, workers found that the 80cm-diameter broken pipe had a hole  10sq.m wide and 8m deep.

The broken piece was 20cm wide. After mending it with glue, workers got into the pipe to see if there was any other leak. The mending was finished at noon on Wednesday.

Viwaco’s general director, Nguyen Anh Viet, said the company mobilized 100 workers and engineers to fix the broken pipe.

He said the firm would soon discover the cause of the incident, adding that the broken section this time was very close to the previous broken points, where the ground is weak.

This is the seventh time the pipeline has ruptured since it was built. The most recent incident occurred on April 25, affecting 70,000 households in the districts of Thanh Xuan, Cau Giay and Hoang Mai.

The Ministry of Construction has set up an inspection team to check the pipe thoroughly.

Recently, the Hanoi government decided to urgently build more than 10km of water pipeline from Highway 21 to the Tich River in order to ease pressure on the pipe from the Da River to Hanoi.

The Da River water pipeline was built by Vinaconex and was put into operation in 2008.

Phuong Lan