Red Cross Blogs

Podcast: Cumbrian floods – six months on

By Mark Cox
May 21, 2010 at 3:26 pm

The Cumbrian floods last November had a devastating effect on hundreds of lives. Six months on, three families recall their darkest hours and discuss how the Red Cross has been helping them ever since. Mother-of-two Lynne Swain, pensioners Mary and Harold Todhunter and local shop owner Catherine Bell share their stories.

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Transcript

Lynne Swain: My name’s Lynne Swain. I live with my husband Mike and three children, Libby, Oliver and Zack in – or we did live in – Challoner Street in Cockermouth until we were flooded in November last year. We’re now living a little further out of town.

The British Red Cross, they made sure that everyone was registered with them and they’ve probably been the most proactive in terms of just being there, ringing us and making sure we knew what was available in terms of appliances that you might need like washing machines or all the things that suddenly you didn’t have. Just knowing that if you needed something…

It was strange really, you see the British Red Cross, they’re on the television and they’re helping in these far-off places and suddenly it’s people like us that needed the help. And we did use them and they did give us telephone numbers and it was so good because we were stressed at the time really it was difficult to think straight a lot of the time.

And then they also arranged for Libby and Oliver to get bikes. There’d been some money handed out by the local Rotary Club. Every household got £150. I sort of said to Hilary I think we’ll get new bikes for the kids because obviously everything in the outbuildings just went, all the bikes, all the things that Zack might of inherited they were all gone. She sort said well don’t buy them, we’ll be able to get you something. And sure enough within a few days she rang and said that in fact Halfords had offered to provide new bikes for Libby and Oliver, which they did, and I mean that was just absolutely amazing, just fantastic.

Mary Todhunter: My name’s Mary Todhunter and I live at 16 Gote Road, Cockermouth with my husband Harold.

We had a terrible mess in our backyard and on the driveway there was about a foot of mud and silt. There was no way that we could really clean this up because we’d lost everything in the flood. And besides that my husband’s 80, I’m 74, we just couldn’t really tackle this. So we went to see the Red Cross and we asked if they thought they could help us in any way. She said leave it with us and she was back in four or five minutes, she said it’s sorted she said there’ll be someone down tomorrow. So sure enough they came the next day and they made a marvellous job of clearing all the yard and the driveway, which we were very, very grateful for.

The Red Cross has been very kind. I’ve had two or three phone calls from Newcastle asking how we were getting on and how the house was. And also the local Red Cross in Cockermouth, they phoned us a few times you know which I thought was really, really good. It does help when you know that someone else is thinking about you.

Harold Todhunter: We can’t thank them enough. After cleaning up at the yard and the house-end, well, it was spotless when they finished. Because, as my wife just said, well I’m 80 now, all my tools etc, they’re gone with the flood. I don’t know where the shed is, maybe in Scotland for anything I know. We can’t praise the Red Cross enough, and we always will do.

Catherine Bell: My name’s Catherine Bell. I live at the Cockermouth papershop on Main Street in Cockermouth. I live here with my husband William, my son Robert who is 12, Kate who is 8 and Gemma who is 4.

Oh, the British Red Cross were absolutely fantastic at getting us informed with how we could get help from everybody. Initially there was a centre at the church and where you could go round and just collect up all the information you needed, because of course United Utilities, all your bills needed to be stopped and moved. And they’re all under one roof so you know, but everybody was just there being so supportive to us all.

As I say, if I needed anything at all they were just there or they used to pop in and see if we were alright, you know, just absolutely fantastic support. And even now, when we’re back in the shop here and our home, the ladies from the Red Cross just come down, in fact I’ve just been talking to one now, you know, checking everything is alright and seeing if there’s anything they can do to help, just being really supportive.

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Tags: Cumbria floods, emergency response, floods, podcast

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Podcasts, UK. 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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