This is N. B. C. Nightly News with Jose Diaz-Billard.

Good evening, a crisis is unfolding across a major American city right now.

Much of Atlanta does not have any water at all and there is no end in

sight take a look at this this is just one of the water mains that burst on Friday

now more than 24 hours later it's still gushing.

One major hospital is now diverting most emergency patients

and has to transport others to different facilities.

The city's aquarium shut down. A major pop-star's concert canceled. The mayor late today saying there is no timeline for repairs. George Solis starts us off tonight.

Tonight, a major American city is in crisis as a water outage wreaks havoc across Atlanta.

The water is a valuable, a critical piece of a critical resource and cities can't function

and lives can't function without it.

It's absolutely at the top of our list.

The outage sparked by multiple water main breaks that occurred

Friday and tonight remain broken. Video showing the rupture sending water gushing

onto streets. People need their water, people got to eat, people got

to cook, we got kids, you need the help. Atlanta's mayor apologizing for the

city's initial lack of communication as he addressed setbacks today in

repairs of the aging infrastructure.

And I will be candid that overnight we did not do the best job of communicating.

With every passing hour, the situation growing more tense as boil water advisories are extended.

Emory University Hospital in Midtown Atlanta forced to divert patients.

The hospital bringing in some 58,000 gallons of water via tanker trucks to use in the hospital's cooling towers as well as bottled water.

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