Firefighters turn plumbers after burst at elderly woman's house
Police officers turned into plumbers when an elderly woman dialled 999 in the middle of the night.
The 72-year-old was so distressed when water started to pour through her ceiling at 3am that she called emergency services.
A call hander managed to keep the woman calm and by the time officers arrived at her home in Avondale, Newport, on Sunday she had managed to turn off the main stop tap. However, water was streaming down into the house as the header tank and pipes emptied themselves, Constable Lee Thomas, of Newport Safer Neighbourhood Team, revealed.
He said: "One of the officers climbed into the loft and discovered a pipe from the water tank had become damaged, possibly by people working in the loft earlier in the day, and over a period of a few hours the water pressure had caused the pipe to fracture.
"They carried out a temporary repair on the pipe and turned off the electricity supply.
"Officers then took the woman to a relative's house in Staffordshire until proper repairs could be carried out."
