27th October 2026 – (Hong Kong) A suspected digger strike on an 18-inch cast-iron main outside Asia Harvest Commercial Centre on Shau Kei Wan Road sent muddy yellow water surging from the ground this morning, cutting fresh supplies across the district until emergency repairs allowed a gradual restart from 9.30pm.
Shortly after 10am, Highways Department contractor workers at a routine roadworks site on the westbound carriageway near Sun Sing Street, opposite the commercial centre, are believed to have punctured the pipe by accident. Water shot up like a fountain, flooding the pavement and both directions of Shau Kei Wan Road so that vehicles had to splash through a temporary lake of silt-stained floodwater.
By evening, the Water Supplies Department said the emergency main repair was finished. Fresh water to Shau Kei Wan and some Sai Wan Ho users began returning to normal from 9.30pm. Because the network is large and complex, the department warned that households at the end of the pipe run or on higher ground might wait another three to four hours for pressure to arrive, with timing also varying by location, pipe condition and floor level.
Most of a day without taps left bottled water scarce. Residents posting online shared photographs of supermarket shelves stripped bare — entire display racks of packaged drinking water cleared out. One neighbour, making light of the scramble, said that on the way home they saw fellow residents carrying armfuls of large bottles, swapping news and greetings in the street, and felt a flash of “old Hong Kong”. The same poster added that since COVID, they have kept several five-litre bottles under the bed for exactly this kind of scramble.
