Burst water main in West Molesey, Surrey disrupts supply to thousands across south London and Surrey

Summary

A large burst water main in West Molesey, Surrey, disrupted water supply to thousands of properties across south London and Surrey on September 28, 2026. Initial reports indicated up to 15,000 properties affected, though this figure was later reduced to 6,000. The leak began at 750 litres per second. The outage affected seven boroughs across London and Surrey, including Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton, and Wandsworth in London, plus Elmbridge and Spelthorne in Surrey. Thames Water worked to repair the burst pipe and restore supplies, providing water deliveries and opening bottled water stations, including one at Sandown Park Racecourse. Several schools and nurseries were forced to close. By later in the day, Thames Water had restored supplies, though some customers experienced lower pressure and intermittent supply during ongoing repairs. The incident prompted local MPs to call for urgent investigation and highlighted concerns about Thames Water's infrastructure investment and the company's £19.5 billion debt.

What imagery could confirm

Which satellite to use, what to look for and why, and whether post-event imagery has been found. Part of the event detail on Pro.

What remains unresolved

• named facility unresolved

Timeline

5 recorded change(s). The ledger starts when this event was first folded: the initial observation is not recorded as a change, so an empty timeline means nothing has moved since, not that nothing is known.

5 change(s) before the history shown here.

Sources

Grouped by outlet. Syndication is not collapsed, so several outlets can carry one wire story — the count is breadth of carriage, not independent confirmation.

• gazetteandherald.co.uk
  • ‘Large burst water main’ cuts supplies across south London and Surrey2026-09-28
• thisisoxfordshire.co.uk
  • ‘Large burst water main’ cuts supplies across south London and Surrey2026-09-28
• standard.co.uk
  • ‘Large burst water main’ cuts supplies across south London and Surrey2026-09-28
• theguardian.com
  • Schools forced to shut amid burst Thames Water pipe ‘leaking 750 litres a second’2026-09-28
• dailymail.com
  • Thousands of homes are left without water and schools forced to close amid burst Thames Water pipe across Surrey and London | Daily Mail Online2026-09-28
• aol.co.uk
  • Water leak cuts supply to thousands of homes across five London boroughs - AOL2026-09-28

Related events

0 related event(s) and 6 place(s) or facilities — the same facility, place, actor or campaign. Part of the event detail on Pro.

Reproduce over the API (free endpoint)

curl "https://offnadir-delta.com/api/v1/events/63486241-cac6-4dd4-9461-418fd786251f/thread" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ond_YOUR_API_KEY"