Councillor Brian Tierney bringing sand bags into flooded homes in Derry last month
Noel McMonagle’s home was one of six houses flooded at Ballyarnett Road on Thursday, April 11.
Noel is currently living in a rented house in Donegal after difficulties arose trying to secure a short term let closer to home.
And he believes it will take “some kind of miracle,” that he’ll be back by early July.
Six homes in Derry’s Belmont estate were each extensively damaged when the water main burst.
Residents have criticised NI Water’s response to the incident at the time saying the company was too slow to respond.
Mr McMonagle said on the day the main burst residents had been “left to their own devices for three and a half hours”.
“They (NI Water) have apologised for that, and said measures in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he told BBC News NI.
In the weeks since, he and his wife have been passed “from pillar to post”.
“It has been a wee bit chaotic. We have been trying to make the best of a bad situation, trying to speed things up and get the work commenced,” he added.
It’s been a slow process, Mr McMonagle added.
They’ve been going to their home in Derry daily, opening windows and doors in the hope that will help.
Work to dry the house has yet to commence.
“That has surprised me the most. I thought that would have been the priority once they cleared the surface water, any water that they needed to pump out,” he said.
He added: “It took us over a week, closer to two, before we had an insurance person come and see us – I thought unacceptable, to me that is time lost”.
Mr McMonagle’s neighbours, he added, “are all in the same boat”.
“Everybody is the same, struggling to get sorted out. The slow progress with the work is getting to everyone.
“This is a straight forward case, NI Water have accepted responsibility, the insurance companies will get any redress for work carried out”.
With a daughter getting married this summer, Mr McMonagle had hoped the family would be home by early July.
“We want to be back in our own home. At this stage it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen unless there’s some kind of miracle,” he said.
NI Water said their response to the burst main prioritised resolving the issue as quickly as possible.
“Overall, the review found we responded to customer calls as quickly as possible.
“However, there is room to improve how we communicate our actions so our customers can be reassured that we are responding with urgency to emergency situations,” the company said.
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