Flood Story and Pictures

I will try my best to describe the events that occurred on the 7th~9th January 2005

Saturday 8th January

1am: I had just finished watching or rather shut off because it was getting very boring and was not as good as the first one Bridget Jones' Diary.

So I turned the DVD off half way through the film and went to bed.

2:45am: I hear my mother shouting from downstairs, something about a flood. I ignore it and go back to bed, while she goes out of the house and into our garage to try and save the car. (She did thankfully)

3am: I hear lots of banging at the front door. So I scramble to find clothes to put on and answer the door. Its not that I did not take any notice of the police man, well he was not first thing I focused my attention on when I opened the door but the torrent of water coming down my street.

He shouts to move any cars out of the flood, which my mother is already in the process of doing. On hearing this I race inside and unplug...

The computer and hifi as they were on my list of first things to save so can you blame me?

4~5am: By this time I was knackered moving all the stuff from the front and back living rooms up the stairs. But that was not the main problem at this point as you looked at the dining room and kitchen you just saw they were getting totalled by the time we had got everything from the other rooms upstairs.

The water had risen to waist height in the dining room in less than 30 or so minutes. Best explain this better; the house on the ground floor is on three separate levels. So you start at the back with the dining and go up steps to kitchen and up one more to hall way. I also started testing the waters in the front room using a chopstick down one of the holes in the floor and every 10mins it was not looking so good.

6~7am: The water has now destroyed most of the kitchen rising above the work surfaces there. We hear a very large bang and go down to peak around the top of the stairs and see the fridge which sits towards the top of the dining room stairs has done a dive into the dining room. Another bang can be heard at this point as the grandfather clock reclines itself and falls down in the back living room. At the point there’s not a lot we can do so I just hop into bed to attempt some sleep.

10~11am: The water is still rising at this point, even though the radio tells us the river will peak at 11am, ten minutes later they realise there is a high tide and due date goes to 3pm.

12~2pm: You start seeing loads of boats move up and down the street ferrying people from flooded homes further down the main Warwick road area. The people across the street also make a ditched attempt to get out of their house when they are nearly head height in water from their house to a boat.

The scene is just not worth considering doing ourselves so we don't risk leaving the house.

4pm: The River peaked, it reached an unbelievable fourth step of our main stairs and even then I was considering moving stuff again up to the attic. However.....

11pm: It’s not until now you start to see the water decline (It had gone down a full 2~3 stairs almost enough to wade around downstairs and just look around) at what has become of your home is not worth mentioning instead we have pictures for that :). It’s also at this point we manage to keep warm by lighting the coal fire in my mother's bedroom. We found some wood in the attic to burn and it was more than enough to keep warm.

9th January

11am: The water has not totally gone which won't happen until late Monday evening but there’s enough gone to be able to walk around down in the hall way section and leave the house.

		This the view from my mother's bedroom, while looking out on to the street. The final one was taken towards the end at night.

		Looking up and down the street and looking east out of the attic window.

		The Dining room after the flood and with still a bit of water left in it. The back living room taken before the grandfather clock went in for fun.

		The back living room after the grandfather clock went down. The front living room shots after the flood and you can still see water on the street outside.

		Looking from the hall into the kitchen, the kitchen after the flood.

		Looking down the stairs to where the water level reached. The second picture is n't far off how far it came up. Notice the bucket marker as well. The backyard towards the end of the flood, the back wall was totally submerged as well as the garage to the left of it.

I do applogise for the quickness of this web page but am very busy at the moment as you can imagine. :)

Edited: Rechecked english and spelling, I must stress I wrote this in a hurry.