A senior Aberdeen councillor has revealed the city had enough clean water to last just 24 hours at the height of Storm Frank.
Depute local authority leader and Lower Deeside member Marie Boulton said the Inchgarth reservoir at Cults was left severely flooded and affected by overflowing sewage.
Only a small break in the downpour averted disaster on December 30.
The Independent councillor said constituents in the Cults area reported seeing a “wall of water” like “something from a disaster movie”.
She said: “It’s important to remember that there are still people who were affected by the floods now that all the news crews and TV cameras have gone away.
“It was horrendous and it got so bad that at one point we only had 24 hours left of water for the city.
“People told me that the top of the reservoir was just completely brown with the sewage.
“There are always contingencies in place but it’s worrying how close we came.
“We can’t allow a major part of our city to be affected like this again.
“It’s lucky the rain calmed down a little or we would have had to look at contingency plans.”
A spokesman for Scottish Water said: “We took a whole range of measures to keep customers in supply during the poor weather conditions last month.
“We constantly monitor our assets and networks throughout the year and have steps we can take to maintain supplies.”