King Edward VII Memorial Hospital is in a desperate state of disrepair, according to a hospital source.

The nurse claimed:

Staff and patients had to put up with a leaking roof in the emergency ward;

Broken beds "miraculously" reappeared after removed; and

Necessary equipment was in poor condition.

The staff member, who asked not to be named, spoke out after The Royal Gazette revealed that the facility went without water for two days earlier this week because of technical problems.

And the insider pointed out that this week's water outage was not a one-off but a regular occurrence.

"The situation with the water is not new - it is always going off," said the nurse.

"If we are running a first class institution then things need to work.

The nurse added that staff members often removed broken beds from wards and put them in a storage room, but they always "miraculously" returned to the emergency room.

"They say they don't have money to replace equipment or to repair things, but if that is the case then they need to get help from somewhere else," the nurse said.

Last night, Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) chief executive officer Joan Dillas-Wright said precautions had been taken to ensure that the hospital is never without water again.

But she failed to address allegations that the building and hospital equipment were in poor condition.

"The pump that affected the water pressure has been repaired and two new pumps were purchased so that we have back-ups available in case of an emergency," Ms Dillas-Wright said.

"We are now running both our water systems at the same time. Previously we only ran one system at a time.

"This should ensure that if one system ever fails again there wouldn't be any disruption to supply since the other will still be running."

She said a back-up pipeline from the dialysis unit to Watlington Waterworks was now being installed should the main pipe to the hospital fail to work.

Ms Dillas-Wright said the electricity at the hospital was functioning as usual, adding that some of the facility's air conditioners had broken down as a result of the water outage. Referring to claims that the hospital's telephone system had also failed, she said that telephone lines in Paget had also been down. "This was completely unrelated to our water supply - as I mentioned yesterday, we used walkie-talkies on Sunday in absence of phone lines and this worked well," said the CEO.