burst from an overhead pipe inside Miles Market on Saturday afternoon.

The burst water pipe caused an estimated $50,000 damage.

William Cox, manager of the Pitts Bay Road, Pembroke supermarket said there were at least fifty people shopping in the store at the time of the accident.

"It is Christmas time and so the store was quite busy,'' he said. "Because we were dealing with water there were immediate safety concerns, obviously with water and electricity. We do have ceramic tiles through out, but it is best to be cautious.

"Everyone left the store voluntarily and most returned later to do their shopping.'' The burst pipe saw the store flooded with nearly half an inch of water and resulted in the supermarket closing for three hours.

Shut at noon to bring the situation under control, the store re-opened at 3 p.m.

Despite the interruption in business and the $50,000 damage, Mr. Cox said he was lucky the accident was not more serious.

"It was a construction accident, you can have these sorts of problem when construction is taking place,'' he noted. "I am thankful it was not really serious.'' The accident caused no structural damage.

"Some of our stock was ruined,'' he said. "The damage was really confined to a small area where dry cereals are kept so most of the damage was in that lost stock and in the cleaning up,'' he added. Full of praise for the team work displayed by his staff, Mr. Cox attributed the quick clean-up to them.

"It was really good to see all the staff come together the way that they did,'' he said. "They were right on the ball and it is only because of them that we were able to open at three, it would have taken much longer otherwise.'' According to Mr. Cox the 36 staff on duty on Saturday voluntarily took on the task to clean up the shop.

"They did mopping, and everything else that needed to be done so that we could re-open, it was a great team effort.'' he said.

The Bermuda Fire Service was alerted to the problem but Mr. Cox noted that although they arrived promptly, "We had things under control by then.

"Our private cleaning company actually have better equipment than the fire department to handle flooding so we used them.''