Businesses are continuing to count the cost of lost trade and damage to buildings after a major Bradford road finally re-opened this week following a massive water pipe burst.

White Abbey Road was closed to traffic for a fortnight after the burst – likened to “a bomb going off” – left a 20ft-deep crater and flooded shops and homes nearby.

Atia Hussain, one of the owners of Atique Textiles, said the business’s retail unit was likely to be closed until the new year while extensive repairs were carried out.

She said: “It’s definitely caused thousands of pounds worth of damage. The whole shop has had to be refitted. All our stock was soaked, the water was at least one metre high and the wooden counters were ruined.”

Naheed and Nasir Sami, who own N&N beauty clinic and Sunny’s Kapra Bazaar in Whetley Close, said they had experienced a huge fall in trade while the road was closed.

Mrs Sami said: “It has really badly affected us. We have had constant cancellations, it’s been awful. The beauty salon has lost between £4,000 and £5,000 a day. People didn’t want to come because of the roadworks.”

Her husband added: “We had no business for two weeks. Now people have started coming back in. I had to use money from my own pocket to pay the bills and the rent. People didn’t realise the business was still open because of the diversion signs. Those two weeks were horrendous.”

Furakh Iqbal, operations manager at Mi-Jewellers in White Abbey Road, said the diversion signs had also deterred customers from coming in.

He said: “It’s hard to quantify how much it’s cost us. People got fed up of the diversions.

“It wasn’t clear that this road was still open. For a couple of days we had hardly any people. The only people that we had here have not been driving because there wasn’t anywhere to park and they weren’t aware that the street was still open.”

The Telegraph & Argus asked Yorkshire Water for a comment on the White Abbey Road situation, but the company had not responded by the time the paper went to press.