Hundreds of Langara Gardens units without water for more than 24 hours

UPDATE: Water was restored to the building Monday morning.

Langara Gardens residents like Caroline Crompton-Griffith are upset about being without water in their units for more than 24 hours.

A water main broke on private property where Langara Gardens is located at West 57th Avenue and Cambie Street in Vancouver around 3 p.m. PT on Jan. 2, shutting off water to up to 1000 people.

"It's a frightening situation, there is a great many elderly people, people with young children like myself," said Crompton-Griffith. "My kids are filthy."

The housing complex's property management told CBC News that 560 units should have water back on by at least Monday and that there was confusion over who was responsible for the broken water main.

Originally Langara Gardens said it believed the line was on city property, but later realized it was on private property and its responsibility to fix.

Vira Prykhodko told CBC she believes it was an ageing pipe that broke.

A letter posted for residents said the company was, "doing everything possible to get the pipe repaired as quickly as possible."

"However this is dependent on being able to get the equipment and skilled trades," said the letter.

"Incredibly disappointing, I'm rather disgusted," said Crompton-Griffith who added that after complaining, management did bring bottled water to her suite where she lives with her partner and three children.

She said however that not every suite received water and that not everyone impacted by the outage was able to go to the ground floor to retrieve water from the complex's pool to use to flush toilets.

"There are many people who have health concerns," she said.

Langara Gardens was built in the early 1970s and was the city's largest rental housing project at the time.