Northern Irish Households Waterless

People queue to fill bottles and tanks with water at the Avoniel Leisure Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland on December 29, 2010. (Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images)

Cracked and leaking pipes in Northern Ireland, the fruit of persistent freezing weather, have left 40,000 people across the region without running water.

Some families have been living this way for over a week. Emergency water stations have been set up across the north of the country to provide water for drinking and cooking, and doctors have warned of the potential of a disease outbreak.

“People with young families have not been able to flush toilets and wash themselves—never mind get access to drinking water. This really is now a public health emergency,” Peter Maguire, a Northern Irish medical doctor from the region told The Guardian.

While Northern Ireland scrambles to set up water stations, a modicum of help is also coming from Scotland: they plan to send 160,000 bottles of water across the channel, according to the BBC.