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Nerves were frayed in Richmond, home to 200,000 people, as repair crews rushed to get the city's water system working again after it was knocked out Monday during a . By Thursday morning, brown sludgy water began to trickle back into many pipes, however it remains unsafe to drink without boiling – even where it’s running clear.

In complex city water systems like Richmond, getting pressure back still doesn’t mean the tap water is safe to drink. Residents will need to keep boiling their water until at least Friday, the city said.

Registered nurse Latoya Jones said her daughter put snow in the bathtub to help flush toilets. Buying paper plates helped minimize water usage.

“Washing dishes, that’s a joke right now,” Jones said. She might take her kids to a local high school that had water.

“Our next family field trip will be to take a shower,” Jones said, smiling. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

At a dozen YMCA locations, more than 4,000 non-members have come for hot showers in recent days, said Jody Alexander, who leads the organization in Greater Richmond.

Liz Canfield was one of them.

“What a lovely experience,” Canfield said. “The five minutes I had was glorious.”

The city is distributing bottled water at 11 sites and delivering it to older residents and others unable to get to those locations. More than 45,000 gallons of bottled water were handed out Tuesday and Wednesday. In addition, residents filled jugs with water from a tanker truck.

Susan Stevens said she found herself constantly turning on her tap, “forgetting that it’s not going to run or it comes out in a small trickle, but that I can’t use it.”

Miguel Vasquez turned on his sink and saw water trickle out for the first time in days.

“I am just wondering, hopefully, that there will be some clarity on why this happened,” Vasquez said. “I have a lot of questions, because obviously the storm wasn’t that bad.”

Mayor Danny Avula would like to know too. The outage occurred less than a week after he took office.

After a power failure at the water plant, a battery backup system that could have kept water flowing stopped working, Avula said.

The water system is now fully pressurized and tests for bacteria have started, he said at a news conference Thursday. The boil-water advisory will be lifted once two sets of tests, taken 16 hours apart, come back negative.

“I am as — or more — interested than anybody about how we make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future,” the mayor said.

Fulgham, who also has been melting snow and ice to flush toilets and using bottled water to brush teeth, was ready to give Avula a pass on the problem.

“We need to work on the infrastructure,” Fulgham said. “I’m not going to blame this on Avula like I’ve seen a lot of people, but we need some work done. The whole system needs need to be redone.”

The crisis impacted neighboring Henrico and Hanover counties, which both issued boil-water advisories days after Richmond’s outage.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin acknowledged that “people are angry and frustrated and tired.”

The start of the state legislative session due to the lack of water at the Capitol. But Youngkin told reporters it wasn’t a major concern — the work will get done eventually.

“There are a lot more important issues with this water crisis right now,” he said.

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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia. AP writer Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.