A record number of people in the Netherlands spent the weekend without water as a result of frozen or burst water pipes. Water Company Vitens said it received some 2,000 help calls from people who had no running water.

The company has put on extra staff to handle complaints. It has advised its five-million-plus customers not to turn down the heat below 14 degrees and open all their central heating radiators.
 
Frozen water pipes can burst and cause serious flooding, as the owners of an Amsterdam canal boat found out during the weekend. They found their home partly sunk under the ice.
 
In the central city of Utrecht, a large part of a secondary school was flooded after a water main burst. Up north in Groningen, a burst pipe in a boiler house left residents of 254 homes without heating. Those affected have been given shelter in a nursing home.
 
 
(tt/imm)

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