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so far yesterday ;
Keswick was cut off, apart from the Penrith approach. The reality of this is that West Cumbria is only acessable from the south!
Sellafield Nuclear site has sent non-escential staff home as a result of torrential rainfall and high winds,
We had 15 servere flood warnings in place for north cumbria,
14 Flood Watches,
Carlisle public park (a big field thing in the middle of town) was under water, as was the Golf course (no loss there then) an may outlying fields, Keswick was only dry as a result of an old slate wall!!! not so today
They evacuated large areas of Keswick and Cockermouth, the authorities adviseing everyone to move their cars and valuables to higher ground!
The A6 between Shap and Penrith was closed, as was the A69 (carlisle to newcastle) and the A591 (Keswick to Windermere) and parts of the A66
Seathwait in Borrodale (officially the wettest place in England) has recorded 173mm (6.8 Inches) of rain in 24 hours, that's more than some countries get in 10 years!
and to top it all, my front garden is flooded ! that's going to ruin my Daffodils for next year.
Today, this have got worse,,
Overnight TWO main bridges have been washed away, and one Policement lost to the torrent. The main road link into Workington from the north has gone taking the main gas line with it. The people living just the other side have a 20 - 30 mile detour, heading back into Cockermouth, which itself is under around 2 METERS or water, the town centre is practically wiped out with almost no businesses left. The RAF and RN are busy picking people from upstairs windows and rooftops.
Just here'd on the local radio that the ARMY has been called in to assist with the rescue, around 11 people are unaccounted for at the mo.
This is all happening 20 minutes away from where I live..... reminds me of the scene outside our front door in 2005:
The RN Seaking had just airlifted the family from the white house you can see, it's normally the other side of the river, which was about 1 meter (in hight) from taking our house out - we were lucky.
The effects of these last few days is going to last for years.
A mate sent me this yesterday, it's from a cameraphone so not great quality, but the waterfall you see is actually a wall that is normally around 20 feet above the river:
Really, the place is a mess.
In Dumfries & Galloway, half of the remote areas are isolated, another mate of mine took 3 hours to get home, a journey that never takes more than 30 minutes.... Glad of a deisel transit most of his time was spent negotiating flooded cars.
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