AAt about 3:15 a.m. on New Year’s Day, Carolyn McClymont looked out her bedroom window at the Sankey River down the road. It looked a little fuller than usual – which was to be expected, given the rain. “But there was nothing out of the ordinary,” McClymont said. “There was no sign of flooding.”
Within an hour, the entire street was under water. The house that McClymont, a science lecturer, has owned with her husband Alan, a technician, for 31 years was filled with dirty water, higher than the kitchen countertops. It covered the sofas, the washing machine, the Christmas tree and everything on the ground floor. The neighbor’s car sank. “Everything is destroyed. Nothing can be saved,” McClymont said. “It will take six or seven months for it to be right again.
“It’s all those memories you’ve collected for years and the little things you can’t replace. Nothing can be salvaged, because it’s not just the canal water, it’s the sewage from the drains.
The damage caused by the water – which has now receded – was enormous. But for McClymont and her neighbors, the floods were no surprise. For years they have been pleading with the local council and Environment Agency to improve defenses in the area after a series of similar incidents, including floods in 2000, 2012, 2015 and a less serious one last month.
Their street in Haydock, St Helens, Merseyside, lies on low-lying land at the intersection of several waterways and the Sankey Wadren Canal, making it vulnerable. Problems were exacerbated during the New Year’s flood when a water pump installed to quickly drain the area failed – apparently due to a power outage at the United Utilities site, when the river burst its banks.
But McClymont, who chairs the Blackbrook Flood Group and runs a WhatsApp group with flood alerts to residents, says simple things that could reduce the risk have been neglected, including maintenance and dredging. The pipes used to divert water when flows are high are left to fill with leaves, which she and Alan often clear themselves whenever there is heavy rain. The promised telemetry system to monitor water levels has also not been activated, with residents told it is still being calibrated.
“We’ve been fighting this for years,” she said. “People say: Why don’t you just move? But I can’t afford another house. No one will buy it now that it’s flooded. So we’re stuck here.”
A few doors away, Chris Moles, 60, a microbiologist who moved in last year, estimates she and her husband, hotel manager Adrian, 53, lost £30,000 worth of possessions, including a car, kitchen utensils and a MacBook. also. Such as her microscope, her fossils, her rare books, and Leonard Nimoy’s signature, Mr. Spock. “Obviously we’re surviving. Everyone survived. But this is the worst of all,” she said. The couple also lost an artwork by Adrian’s son, Adam, who died of Addison’s disease five years ago, aged 15. “We’re still here,” Mullis said. “We would have lost everything else if we could have kept this drawing of his.”
Before they bought the house – their first – in April, they say they were promised defenses would be in place and that the chance of flooding was “extremely small”. “We were told they did this, that and the other, and that there was a very small chance of flooding. That didn’t turn out to be true,” she said.
“It’s heartbreaking. I can understand that there are a lot of people who need help. There are a lot of places that are flooded. But when this happened four or five times, you thought they had done something. You pay council tax and you trust people Officials to act in your best interest and this has literally left us behind.”
Seven miles away in Pewsey, Warrington, residents near another stretch of the Sankey Canal faced a similar fate. Vulnerable people living in supported housing were among the worst affected after a canal-linked creek overflowed.
They included Barbara Gee, 61, who was cooking a New Year’s Day meal for her husband, Alan, 67, when the water started pouring. At about 3.30pm, she looked out the front window of her small house and saw the playgrounds and roads submerged in water.
He seemed to be overstepping. But after flooding in 2021, the couple were given a flood barrier by the housing association that manages the property to connect it to their front door.
Gee sent her daughter Liz a photo of the floods arriving on her doorstep. “Oh my God,” Liz replied, wondering if the flood barrier was working. “For now,” J wrote back. But within half an hour the defense was overwhelmed. She said water was flowing not just out the front door, but into every room: it was flowing through the drains in the bathroom, through the toilet, and leaking through the walls. “I was crying. I just burst into tears,” she said.
The couple lost almost everything they owned. On Friday, three days after the flood, their possessions in their front garden were piled up, contaminated or destroyed. The pile included a sofa, kitchen utensils, rugs and J’s electric bike.
The alert system used to call for help in emergency situations has been broken. Their clothes and shoes were wet. “We lost the equivalent of four bags of food from the freezer and everything was wet,” Gee said.
They are stoic and grateful: they have a family who can support them. They are grateful to Warrington Local Council for helping to accommodate them in a hotel while they tried to work things out. But they feel that they and their neighbors have been neglected.
“Flood defenses didn’t work. It should be safer. We got help with housing and food. I can’t knock them for that. They were very good that way. They tried to put up flood barriers, but it didn’t work. They probably thought that That would help, but what good would it be to have flood barriers if it would come through the walls and the clean-up would take months, with no money to help secure the contents, which they couldn’t afford “because of the cost of living” and because it was “expensive”? “Very much” yet The last flood.
Their neighbor Jeffrey Frayne, 78, the lollipop man and former bus driver, whose possessions are also piled up outside his house, is in the same boat. “I think it’s very expensive to get insurance here… and when it flooded last time, it caused insurance premiums to go up,” he said. He said the flood barriers provided by the housing association were a “waste of space”.
“I installed flood barriers but the water came within minutes. I tried to shake it off but then I gave up.” “It is catastrophic for me. I have a dog. I live alone. “I live with one of my children, but I feel like a burden and I don’t like to be imposed.”
He added: “Floods have been going on for years. “It’s an ongoing thing and I don’t think they’ve done enough.”
Back in Hajduk, the clean-up mission is in full swing. On Friday, volunteers armed with cleaning supplies came to clean bathrooms and gather destroyed belongings into containers.
The McClymonts – one of the few families who were able to secure insurance – have to hold everything until the assessors come out, so their driveway is covered in 20 black bags.
Amy, 25, who lives with her stepfather Richard Colborne and mother Joan, says the worst thing is that she feels this could have been prevented. “It’s a shock,” Amy says. “We’ll be shocked every time it rains. We need this to not be a concern anymore. I think it’s ridiculous. It happened 10 years ago. How can it happen again?”
An Environment Agency spokesman said: “Protecting communities is our top priority… Environment Agency teams are working around the clock during the new year, operating flood defences, issuing flood warnings and supporting affected communities.
“More broadly, we are delivering a long-term funding program for flood defences, investing more than £1 billion this year to scale up national resilience by building new defenses and improving existing flood defences.”
Adam Hogg, environment spokesman for the Local Government Association, said: “While councils will always do their best to ensure their areas are as resilient as possible and, when responding to extreme weather, prioritize efforts to ensure the safety of residents, the financial pressures on local government “It exacerbated the problem.” Impact on their ability to address issues such as flooding as much as they want…
“The nation is not prepared enough [for the impacts of the changing climate]The central government must prioritize its work with local government to bridge this gap.
Regarding the flooding in Haydock, United Utilities said: “A pumping station was inundated when the local river burst its banks. This resulted in a power outage to our site. “We have sent a tanker to the area to manage our operations.”