Red Cross Blogs

After the (Cumbria) flood

By Mark Cox
May 22, 2010 at 11:30 am

I used to live in a flat where, almost as an annual tradition, the bloke upstairs and his antique washing machine would flood my kitchen.

To be fair, the damage was always quite minimal (there’s only so much water to spill out from a washing machine) but I still remember that gut-churning feeling when I’d open the door and see a puddle.

So quite how I’d deal with a torrent of eight-foot deep floodwater – including sewage waste – washing through my living room, I can’t quite imagine. But that’s what happened to hundreds of residents in Cockermouth last November. Prized possessions, furniture collected over the years, irreplaceable photos of young ones (and even departed ones) – all gone forever in a couple of hours.

Many families were faced with fast-rising and filthy water that overwhelmed their homes before there was any chance to save their belongings. For most, it was more a question of running upstairs and saving themselves.

On that very first evening, the Red Cross had rescue boats struggling through the flooded streets to save stranded residents. Six months on, our volunteers are still busy offering support to people in the area – people such as mother-of-two Lynne Swain, pensioners Mary and Harold Todhunter and local shop owner Catherine Bell. Listen to their moving stories.

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Tags: disaster, disaster response, emergency response, floods, Health and social care, volunteers

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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