It’s 31 December 2024, and I’ve finally got my house the way I want it after some recent finishing touches.
I’m in an excited mood, preparing to host a party for my family tonight. I’ve spent about £300 on food and party stuff to make everything perfect.
New Years Eve has always been very special to me. When I was a child, it was big parties at my Aunty Mary’s and I was a bit shy and it was overwhelming but also filled with happy memories and now it’s become my think to host as a homage to my aunty who passed away a couple of years ago and my uncle who passed last year.
I had disco lights, bubble machines, smoke machines, LED foam tubes, glowsticks, sparklers, party poppers and party cannons. There was draft lager on tap, hot mulled wine, and every spirit you could imagine.
It was a great party. Lots of hard work, but great. We were planning on using the garden, I had a firepit, giant parasol, and patio heater to keep us warm, but it had been raining all day, so we stayed inside.
Sometime after 2330, we noticed the back garden was getting a bit water logged and the front too. My driveway was pooling, too. It had been raining all day, not heavily but consistently. An amber flood alert had been issued. There is a very small brook quite close but it’s normally just a trickle you could step in without noticing and this block of five terraced houses is slightly lower than the road, with the driveway dipping slightly close to the house.
The drainage on the road is pretty good. At no point did the road get waterlogged, but the house drains themselves were overwhelmed.
We sat in the house after midnight, watching the water rise higher and unable to do anything about it. My mum, aunty and uncle had a taxi booked at 0030, at that point they got damp but managed to get in the taxi ok. My brother and his partner left at a similar time.
That left me, my cousin Katy, who has cerebral palsy and is wheelchair bound, my cousin Lil, who is seven months pregnant, and my cousin Eddie, who has Downes Syndrome and walking difficulties. They were going to be staying overnight. It was becoming harder to see the water levels from the camera, so I briefly opened the front door. A little water came in, so I quickly shut it and put towels down, and they were immediately saturated.
I immediately told Eddie and Lil to get upstairs and cut off the electricity. Eddie paniced and had an accident, but we got him to the bathroom to safety.
Katy’s wheelchair is also electric, so Lil turned off the power to that too. Katy’s Labrador cross dog was on her lap. It turns out she’s scared of water. The water was now coming in from both the front and the back. We decided that Lil, Eddie, and Imogen should evacuate, so they ordered a taxi, which came quite fast.
The water was freezing cold and about 5-10 cm above our ankles at the deepest part. Lil got out with Imogen, the dog first. Imogen was very freightened and trying to jump on the sofas to escape the water, so she had to be pulled on her lead to get her out. Eddie was terrified, too. I held his hand and walked him through the water. There was debris. You couldn’t see the floor or where the step was, but we got him out.
My neighbours to the right were also flooded. They moved their car off the drive and were using the wheely bins to try and get the water to the street drain, barefoot.
I talked to the mum, and she said it’s never been this bad before and that her other neighbour was a vulnerable lady in her 80s, who she helped upstairs.
I went back in and called 999. It took 5 minutes for an operator, but they had to try 4 different numbers to get through to the fire service. It was actually West Midlands fire service, 100 miles away. Greater Manchester Fire service was overwhelmed. They took down the details, and I made it clear that Kary was disabled and trapped, and they said they’d pass it on.
Nothing happened for an hour. Katy is very stoic. She’s used to dealing with things going wrong and takes it in her stride. She tries to keep people around her that panic calm.
There was nothing we could do. We had no light other than these foam LED flashing light battons, some that were defiantly floating and flashing, plus plenty of glow sticks. My feet were freezing in the water, and she was worried about me, but there was no way I was leaving her alone downstairs.
We used a bit of gallows humour, filming the water and the floating glowsticks, and posted them with My heart will go on from titanic and the flood by take that to amuse outselves.
After an hour, I rang 999 again. This time, we got through much faster, and an engine was with us after 15 minutes! We were relieved.
The fire service came in, and they wanted to take her up the stairs, but Katy is dependent on her wheelchair. Taking her upstairs may stop her getting wet, but it would leave her 100% trapped and in pain. We weren’t happy with that at all.
They said it was too dangerous to evacuate her as they couldn’t see the bottom of the water in the front, and there was debris. They were worried about dropping her and any harm coming to her.
They were also concerned about what happened then. None of us knew the state of Katy’s chair. She normally gets to my house by tram or bus. She would have needed a specialist taxi with a wheelchair ramp to get home that way, and they are very hard to get hold of.
I remember one time when her mum was dying in hospital and we needed to get home in the early hours she was left stranded by the taxi firm so she and my aunty had to walk/roll to my mums house, a couple of miles away. Every little thing we take for granted, Katy has to struggle with, but despite that, she has managed to get a degree in teaching, I’m very proud of her. Her courage puts me to shame.
They weren’t keen on getting her out at all. Their message seemed confusing to me, telling her that she’s safe where she was but telling me to call the emergency insurance number to get put up that night as it wasn’t safe to stay.
I told them I’m not leaving without her. I asked about pumping the water from the driveway just enough so that they could safely get her out, but they said the water would just be replaced instantly, and there was nowhere for the water to go. I pointed out that the road itself wasn’t flooded and the drains were doing their job.
They may have been right, but they had to do something to try to get her out. Katy was in tears. They said that the water levels inside were receding and we should wait until the water levels were lower than the step then they’d come back to pump but when I asked how long they thought we were talking, they said that rain was still expected to carry on, it felt like we were being fobbed off, so they left after doing nothing.
We sat in the cold and dark, I put more blankets on Katy but it got to the point where I couldn’t feel my feet at all so I had to go up and take the sodden socks and shoes off and I fell asleep.
I woke up, checked on katy with my phone, and opened the curtains. The water level seemed constant and high but not rising. I was going to ring 999, but another fire crew pulled up outside my house. They had come to lift the elderly next door but one lady to safety. I went out and told the crew about Katy.
Their first suggestion was to lift her upstairs, but when I explained why that would make things worse, they listened, went in to talk to Katy, and analyse the situation.
It was an incredibly difficult situation for tbem. The hallway is narrow. Normally, Katy arrives through a guinell and into my house through my wider kitchen french doors. This route was not an option. By this stage, heavy parasol weights were just floating. The astro turf was floating, and the guinel was very deep.
They managed to fish out Katy’s ramp, which had gone for a morning swim in the garden too. They devised a plan, organised an ambulance, removed an internal door, and restored the power to the chair. To our relief, it was fully functioning.They put chocks under the ramp to create a stable service, but then what happens at the end of the ramp?
They devised a plan to reverse the ambulance onto the drive and use it’s tailgate to extend the ramp, but first, I had to move my car out of the way.
My car has a unique party trick. I can start her up from the key and drive her forward or backwards without anyone in the car in a straight line. It’s great fun making people think they’ve seen a ghost as an empty car suddenly moves. It is very useful getting in and out of tight parking bays.
Anyway, so I walked my car over across the road to the rescuers amusement, the ambulance driver did a fab job getting in close enough for the ramps to meet and the fire crew pit extra support under the ambulance tailgait as they’re not designed to take the 300kg weight of the wheelchair. They made it work, got her in the ambulance, drove out of the water, and then assessed her. She was fine, so they helped her out of the ambulance on her duck approved chair.
My focus then shifted to my fish. I have a tropical tank and a marine tank, but without power, the water was way too cold. The tropical fish, in particular, were aggitated and dying. I lost all my shrimps and all but on glowlight tetra, managed to save 4 guppies and a few snails, into a jug, and I had a spare heater anyways.
Luckily, I recently bought a small 25l tank for quarantining, and I used this to rescue the marine fish. I save my pair of clowns, my firefish, my royal gamma, a bengal cardinal, 3 turbo snails, 2 strawberry conches, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 fire shrimp and one of the two emerald crabs.
They don’t like their downsize, but they’re now warm and alive. The workman who’s done a load of house jobs for me helped me transport them to my mums. It’s only 1.5 miles, but we had to change routes twice to avoid floods, and the 8 million speed bumps (exageration) did not help.
Katy was able to make the same journey in her chair so now everyone is safe. I’m exhausted, I was already as I hadn’t slept, preparing the house for the party the night before (shouldn’t have bothered mopping).
Lots of people have been offering their help and support. My friend Lorraine came with hot flasks of drink and helped move my cousins car to safety. My friend Matt came to lend me his wellies and helped to secure my house.
I’ve been inundated with messages of support and offers of help, and I’m very grateful to you all. It is a blow, I don’t know how much damage has been done to the electricals. The water has receded now. There’s mud everywhere on the floor, but hey, nobody (human at least) has been harmed. Things can always be replaced. I will bounce back, and it will become one of those “remember that time stories.”
It’s not going to break my resilience. If anything, it’s given me even more appreciation for my cousin Katy and how she handles situations that would break most people!
Happy New Year, everyone! When I said I was thinking of upgrading to a bigger fish tank, this wasn’t exactly what I meant. Still, what doesn’t drown you makes you wetter….I mean stronger!
Rant Over 