The clearing up the damage that was caused by the flood on Monday, has hardly started. It doesn’t matter where you start there is always another place that you should be doing first.
How such an insignificant unnamed stream became such a raging torrent I will never understand or know. The stream would be no more than two foot wide and eight inches deep. I suppose in a couple of places erosion may have made it three feet wide, but never more than that.
The first that I knew that we had had a flood was when one of the tenants in the farm cottages knocked at the farm house door at about 7.am, Monday morning, informing us that at about 4.30 am there had been a flood that had gone into the cottages. On making my way to see what damage had been done, I could see that a small pond in the farm yard had piled up debris on the fences, but on turning into the cottages parking area I could not believe my eyes. The force of the flood water had turned two cars ninety degrees, and were resting on each other, with a gate that had been ripped of of its hinges, that had travelled eighty metres in between the two vehicles. The water had risen to the steering wheel, and both vehicle are write offs. The stones of the levelled parking area had been moved to form two large mounds, with some that had been thrown onto the lawn. Every bit of vegetation from the cottages to the lake had been flattened tight to the ground. The Lake was now orange in colour, where the flood water had gone in. The spare capacity in the lake seems to have stopped the surge of water going any further, as at the far end only small area of grass and vegetation had been flattened as it made it way to a large pond next to the lake. I cant imagine that none of the fish were swept from the lake to the pond, but I did not see any that were out of the water.
The inside of the cottages were mud baths. All the carpets were muddy and wet, with a tide mark up to eight inches off of the floor, making the walls dirty. New carpets and underlay have had to be ordered, but wont be able to be fitted until the cottages dry out, by using hired air blowers and dehumidifiers.
Part of the drive tarmac has been lifted, fences broken and a substantial gate broken in two. We are still finding more damage all of the time. I went to the place where the streams enters the farm from a wood. Two trees have been knocked over, and it is obvious that a lot of water has passed through the wood. Before I got to the wood the width of the stream, where the valley camera is situated, would have increased from two feet to twenty metres. Although I have not looked any further, I am told that it started a very long way up the valley.
One of the cars that has been written off belongs to a person on holiday. The cottage has no carpets, there are three dehumidifiers in there and they chose to stay, without any complaints. Hopefully the new carpets will be able to be laid in the middle of next week, and the farm back to normal by the weekend.
We have a annex in the farmhouse. Although we had no damage in the farmhouse, the annex got flooded. The person using it is away in Brittany, entertaining the French, Morris Dancing. A friend of his left his car on the farm whilst they are away. His car is also a write off. They are in for a shock when they return at the weekend.
Although there was a lot of damage no one was injured. It would have been very unlikely that if it had happened in daytime that any one would have been injured either. I have lived at Denbury for some years, and the stream has only gone over once when the underneath of a bridge got blocked, and that was a one off, just as this incident will be.
Thankyou all for your kind words.