Water Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink in Diary

It’s really quite hard when your entire immediate family have had their homes flooded under four feet of water, they’re trapped inside their homes with no power, no heating and no clean running water and you can’t get in touch with them for days on end.

Saturday 3pm, my sister puts a photo on Facebook to show that the river is higher than normal.
5pm, my sister evacuates her home but doesn’t have time to pack anything and takes her whole family to her sister-in-law’s house with nothing but the clothes they’re standing up in. My parents start moving everything upstairs in their house.
7pm, my mam texts me to say the water has come into the house and they’ve had to move themselves upstairs.

Then comes two days, yes TWO DAYS, of my parents and my grandparents being trapped upstairs in their respective houses with no power, heating or drinking water. As they have no way of charging their phone batteries, I tried not to contact them too much in case they needed them for emergencies. The water was like a raging torrent roaring past the houses so it was too dangerous for the emergency services to get there to rescue them or even take supplies.

I hardly slept for two nights worrying about them all, crying on and off, glued to Facebook looking for updates from people who were in the town and rescue efforts.

Being 200 miles away there wasn’t a lot I could do. The town was closed off from the rest of the world; bridges too dangerous to cross, roads collapsing, no way in or out. I kept thinking of more things to worry about, the strangest one was worrying about the poor dog. Mam and dad have housetrained him so well, he wouldn’t go to the toilet in the house, I felt so bad for him, probably wondering why no one was letting him out to poop or wee!

I went into work on Monday morning, my workmate said to me in passing “Morning, are you alright?” and I promptly burst into tears…I was pretty useless at work all day yesterday.

My uncle Gary finally put some photos on Facebook on Monday morning to say my grandparents had been rescued by lifeboat.

This is my Auntie Pat, who stayed in there with them.

And this is my nana and granda, look at their happy faces!

Not long after, my sister Sonja texted me to say she’d just seen our parents on Main Street so they’d finally got out as well! I was so relieved everyone was safe.

So begins the epic clean up. Yesterday there were loads of Facebook messages and text messages flying about. My Auntie Mary was desperate to get hold of my parents for some reason, frantically messaging me and my sister, saying they were banging on the door and no one was answering. Maybe they were out buying groceries or just stretching their legs, not sure why she was panicking so much.

Loads of local businesses and tradesmen were offering their services free of charge so I gathered together some contact details of removal companies, electricians, plumbers etc. and sent them over to my parents. Dad called one of them and they’re hopefully having their power and gas turned back on tomorrow.

The local pub posted on Facebook that they’d had to stop two people from looting the shop where my sister works; there will always be scumbags. I sent her a message and told her to ring her boss and get him down there. She replied saying her workmate had punched one of the looters. Epic.

One of my old friends from Loughborough works for the Independent, a national newspaper, and asked if he could get one of his reporters to call me about it. I said I’m happy to talk to him but I don’t really know much as I couldn’t get hold of anyone. He said it’s fine, he wants a story from the point of view of someone trying to help from a distance. Did he heck! He was on the phone for half an hour asking loads of in-depth questions that I couldn’t answer, including how much it cost the insurance company to clean up last time the town was flooded, exact details of the flood defences that have been put in the river (I said my parents had floodgates but the water overtopped them. He didn’t know what floodgates were…I said the river had been dredged to increase the depth and reduce chance of flooding, he said “Oh, they drained the river?” HOW THE HELL DO YOU DRAIN A RIVER?) He asked me to email him some photos, which I did, along with names to credit them to (my sister, auntie and uncle) and they mentioned some sort of charitable donation to the clean up effort. But when I asked about it in my email, I didn’t receive a reply. I looked in the paper today and couldn’t see the story so I don’t know if it’s going to be printed or not. I’m not holding my breath about the charitable donation.

I went to roller derby last night and one of my friends gave me £20 to buy groceries and cleaning products. Jay’s best mate and his wife came round earlier with a bag full of bleach, cloths and torches. The church went to my mam and dad’s house last night to take them sandwiches and hot soup; they don’t even go to church! Everyone has been so generous and helpful.

Sonja said mam and dad were just standing in their house, looking lost, not knowing where to start. It must be so awful for everyone, and so close to Christmas as well.

Well I had Friday already booked off work, just using up my holidays, so now I’m going to go up there for the weekend and help them clean. I haven’t told mam and dad I’m going, they’ll only tell me not to, so I’m going to surprise them on Thursday evening with goodie bags of groceries and cleaning products and scrub all weekend!

Here are some photos I’ve shamelessly stolen from various people on Facebook.

The view from Sonja’s window just before she evacuated.

This is behind Sonja’s house, just as the water started to come over.

The view from my grandparents’ bedroom window.

Main Street.

Looking down the street where Sonja lives.

Ummmm, all the brown parts are water. They’re not really all supposed to be. My parents, grandparents and sister’s houses are all on these two photos.

Hard times are ahead, please keep them all in your thoughts.

Last updated December 08, 2015