MOTORISTS faced rush-hour chaos after a huge water main burst, sending more than 350,000 litres of water gushing onto the road in just half-an-hour.

The 16-inch main - situated under West Ham Roundabout at the entrance to Basingstoke Leisure Park - split at around 8am on Tuesday.

By 8.40am, water was spurting out of the hole at a rate of 200 litres a second. An average household shower only runs at six litres per minute.

The water poured onto the main road in the direction of Churchill Way West before the valve was switched off at 9.10am.

Jane Gould, spokeswoman for South East Water, said: "When you get a main of this size bursting, you get a lot of water, as you can imagine.

"It can be caused by a variety of things. It can be a change of temperature - going from extreme cold to warmer weather - or ground movement that causes pipes to move and split.

"Most of the time we simply don't know what the cause is. We just have to deal with the result."

The incident caused long tailbacks for motorists accessing the roundabout from the B3400 and Worting Road, West Ham.

The section of the roundabout surrounding the burst main was closed and traffic was diverted through the leisure park.

Pc Pete Steele, of Basingstoke police, said: "A member of the public called me at about 8.30am.

"We arrived and could see the ground around the main moving, so we cordoned off the roundabout and diverted the traffic so nobody ended up in a big hole."

The diversion remained in place for a couple of hours while workers from South East Water cleared the road of water and started work repairing the damaged section of the main - a task that could take up to three days.

The section of Churchill Way West - between West Ham Roundabout and Thornycroft Roundabout - and the exit from the leisure park have both been reduced to one lane while the work is undertaken.

Miss Gould said: "They have to take out the damaged section and they will have to get in there to replace it with a new section. They will then need to connect the new section to the existing main and put the water back through it.

"At this stage, we are estimating that it is likely to take two to three days to repair it.

"This will not affect the water supply to people's homes because we can rezone the water, which means that it does not go through the damaged section."

First published: Wednesday, March 9, 2005