It’s been just over a month since York experienced its worst flooding for decades, bringing Christmas to an abrupt end for many. Heavy rainfall on Boxing Day, combined with a controversial decision by the Environment Agency to raise one of York’s major flood barriers, left almost 600 homes and businesses submerged in filthy river water contaminated with sewage for 48 hours.
With little warning, hundreds of residents had to be evacuated from their homes in the middle of the night by Mountain Rescue teams as the water levels rose rapidly. Many were only able to take the clothes they were wearing with them.
Of course, York was just one of a number of areas of the country left beleaguered in what was the wettest month on record, with the cost of the floods likely to run into billions of pounds.
Days later, when the city’s residents and business owners returned to their properties, they found them dark and dank, their contents sodden and covered in a thick layer of mud and silt – amounting to thousands of pounds worth of damage to each of them.
For the fortunate ones who had insurance, the clean-up and drying process started almost immediately. For others – those who did not have contents insurance – they have had to simply write off furniture, equipment and possessions that they were unable to save. In some extreme cases, such as that of Joanne Leas, who was refused buildings insurance due to living in a flood-risk area, residents have become homeless.
Our house is basically rotting from the inside
Amy Ellis, 31, her engineer husband Peter, 33, and their three children have lived yards from the river Ouse in a three-bed Victorian mid-terrace house for five years. Their house was badly damaged in the autumn floods in 2012 and as a result they could no longer afford their contents insurance premiums. So when, in the early hours of 28 December, they were evacuated by a Mountain Rescue team they knew they were going to lose their possessions all over again. Up until last week, when a cleaning company began to decontaminate their basement, their house stood cold, damp and empty.
They’ve no mains electricity and have yet to have any heaters or dehumidifiers put in to start the long drying process. The family are living in nearby rented accommodation, furnished with donations from a community furniture store as they have no money to replace the items they have lost.
Amy says: The river comes up into the park opposite us quite often. It had been fairly high for about a week, so Boxing Day was just like any other day. I went to bed as normal and was woken at 4.30am by the Mountain Rescue team. They said we needed to evacuate because the Foss Barrier was going to be opened and there was going to be a surge. We got the children out of their beds, put their coats on and handed them over to Mountain Rescue, who took them to the end of the street.
We hadn’t time to move any of our stuff upstairs, so we left everything – we just wanted to get everybody out. The water came up to about just over a metre high in the house, and stayed there for about 48 hours before receding. We got back into the house on 30 December. My husband and dad had to wear waders like dungarees just to get to the house as the river was up to their waists, although it wasn’t in our house any more. It was almost unbelievable to see what the water had done. The floors and walls had an inch or two of mud and sewage on them. It was damp, cold and it smelt. Everything was ruined – it wasn’t like our house any more. Everything we’d worked for had been totalled. We’d only just got it back to how we wanted it after the last flood.
We don’t have contents insurance. It was much too expensive because our house is in a flood-risk area. We do have buildings insurance and have had a builder out– his estimate of the work to be done is £26,000, so we are hoping our insurance will cover that cost.
No one’s been in to clean or do anything – they couldn’t because there’s no power, so it’s basically rotting from the inside. I just want to wash my hands of it, but I can’t because it’s my house. I feel like I’ve been let down. We feel like we’re on our own. The river’s back in its bank, York looks quite normal, even other people along our street are back in their homes, whereas for us it’s going to be about 12 months.
We are now homeless and living in a caravan
Single mother Joanne Leas, 40, has been a resident of York’s designated traveller community site on James Street for 21 years. She has lived there in her own two-bed chalet, which she bought 13 years ago for £25,000, with her eight children since it first opened. She, like many who live on or near flood plains, was unable to take out buildings or contents insurance, so when the floods came they destroyed her home and left her and her children homeless.
Leas and five of her youngest children are now living with her 21-year-old eldest daughter, who is married, in her caravan. It only has two bunk beds and a kitchen. Her other two children are living separately with family members. Her home, which was beset with more than 6ft of contaminated water, is one of 10 on the site that have been condemned, and will be demolished by the council. York Travellers Trust is trying to raise £100,000 to replace the homes. To donate go to gofundme.com/mrgvruuk.
Joanne says: By 3pm the water was already about 4ft high. We had no phone calls or warnings or anything; we had no chance of rescuing anything. We didn’t think for one minute we were going to get absolutely wiped out. The water was unbelievable – it was coming in so fast. We got no help whatsoever.
We panicked – I grabbed my children. I had to get them off site. Everybody was stood looking, watching our homes be destroyed. I was heartbroken. Nobody from the council came down; nobody from the Environment Agency came down. We were just left there as a little community, stood on our own in the darkness thinking ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
We came back the next morning and the water was up past my window sills. Everything you have in a house, that’s what we lost. David Cameron came down for a visit – he was about 200 yards from the site and didn’t even come and have a look at the devastation.
They say we can hopefully get back on site in March or April, but when we do go back to James Street we haven’t got any homes. I’m worried about whether I’m ever going to get a home for these children again. We’re living day to day. It’s scary not knowing what the outcome is going to be. At the end of the day we are human – we’re no different from anybody else.
I don’t know when we’ll get back in – we’re in limbo
Wendy Hudson, 56, manager of York’s only independent furniture store, Hambleton Furniture, stood shaking and in tears when she saw the devastating impact the floods had on the shop. About £50,000 of solid oak furniture was found damp and strewn all around. The carpets stank of sewage. And the windows were so filthy she couldn’t see through them for residue silt.
A week later she was overjoyed when an out-of-town waste management company sent a crusher and a team to help clear the shop of contaminated stock for free. A month on the shop is a shell. The plaster has been stripped from the walls, but the driers have yet to arrive. Hudson is still trading, taking orders over the phone, and hopes to be back in the building by the end of March.
Wendy says: It was a struggle to get the door open – furniture had fallen over. It stank. You couldn’t see through the windows with the damp and condensation, the furniture had tide lines, and the drawers were full of silt. It took ages to get the carpet up as we had to move all the furniture. We had to cut it into strips, it was horrible.
My husband got talking to a man from a waste management company who said he was giving out skips in the Dewsbury and Leeds area. He said we could do with one of those. Two days later we had a call saying ‘We’re outside your shop’. They had a great big bin van, like a crusher, and loads of lads. They literally cleared the stock. It took them a day. We knew we had to destroy the furniture because you can’t do anything else with it. A month on it’s a shell. The ceiling lights are working but that’s about it. The problem is the dehumidifiers haven’t come yet, and the whole shop has got to be disinfected.
I honestly don’t know when we’ll get back in – we’re in limbo. We’re losing a lot of trade because this is normally our busiest time. Our insurance will only cover us for three months, then we need to be back in.
We thought that we had contents cover – we didn’t
Actor and poet Stuart Freestone, 30, and his wife Hannah Wallace, 29 and a theatre director, have been renting their two-bed mid-Victorian terrace from his aunt and uncle for more than two years. As far as anyone was aware, the property, near the river Foss, hadn’t flooded before. So when Stuart received a call from Floodline at 6pm on 26 December saying it was a possibility, he and Hannah spent the evening moving their possessions upstairs as a precautionary measure. At 10.30pm that evening, they went to stay at a friend’s house, still not convinced their home would flood. When Stuart returned the next day he had to wade through waist-level water just to get to his street.
One month on they are still staying with their friend. The drying out has started but it will be up to six months before they can go back home.
Stuart says: The water was halfway up my shin throughout the ground floor. It was brown sewage water, which was a nightmare and probably the most devastating part of it. It’s so invasive, it felt like we’d been burgled.
The smell wasn’t the first thing that struck me – it was freezing cold. Luckily we had managed to put everything of value, or sentimental value, upstairs, but we hadn’t been able to move couches or our dining room table. It’s hard to put a value on what we lost – everything downstairs had to be skipped.
When the water receded I spent two days gutting the downstairs with a team of people from the community. It smelt quite badly in there – more than I expected. Going upstairs and seeing the carpets, bedding and clothing damp and smelly was a bit of a shock. That was one of the hardest things – we thought our stuff was safe upstairs, and it was from water damage, but not from the moisture and the smell that came with it.
We were under the impression that we had contents insurance with our bank, but it turns out we actually didn’t. In hindsight we are so thankful that we managed to move everything upstairs so it didn’t affect us as badly as it could have done. Although we felt gutted when we found out we weren’t covered, and there are things we weren’t insured for, it could have been a lot worse.
Our flood risk assessment said we would be fine
Bar and cafe owners Sarah Lakin, 51, and brother Mike, 44, consider themselves lucky, despite not having adequate contents insurance and losing £7,000 of fixtures, equipment and stock. Compared with their neighbours, many of which are still closed, they have able to reopen their bar, The Fossgate Social, just three days after the floods struck. A month on, they say trade is picking up and they want people to know that York is very much open for business.
Sarah says: We’ve got a Victorian building with a brick cellar where we keep all our stock. On Boxing Day morning we noticed the water was coming in and making a puddle. We started to panic and carried everything we could upstairs. We shut by lunchtime.
When we came in the next morning the water was up to the roof in the cellar. Everything in it had completely gone. But we were very lucky – it didn’t actually flood the cafe. We’re on the Foss not the Ouse, which floods all the time. The Foss is usually very benign – it’s almost like a canal – so to see it flood was gobsmacking.
Before we bought the building we had a flood risk assessment done as part of our planning application to convert it into a cafe and bar, and the report said we were fine. So we thought we wouldn’t worry about flood insurance. We lost all of our equipment: the CCTV system, remote line cooler, refrigeration unit, electrics/lighting. It was worth around £6,000-£7,000.
We’ve been very lucky. The council immediately set up a flood fund. We applied and have just received the money – we spent it on a refrigeration unit. That’s a wonderful response. I’m going to be able to get the cellar up and running because of that money.
For the first few days of opening, our takings were down 50% on last year’s. It was worrying that every time you saw York on television they would choose to show really desperate images of the city. We rent rooms to holidaymakers, but people were cancelling because they thought it was too dangerous to come.
The BBC One Show filmed on our street; the producer spent the afternoon in our bar. When the programme went out, all they showed was closed businesses decimated by flooding. They didn’t mention that a lot of people had reopened, and they finished their report off with ‘And more flooding on the way’. Which gave us the kiss of death.
It’s a sensitive issue – I don’t want to go on about how I’m open when my neighbours are still shut, but my neighbours, like us, are traders and they want to come back to a viable, vibrant street, not a dead one.
I worry about whether we will get insurance again
Secondary school teacher Alison Taylor, 46, lives with her partner Peter Hope, 67, a retired illustrator, in a two-bed Victorian terrace, and has more questions than answers. She wants to know why they weren’t warned about the lifting of the Foss Barrier sooner, why there wasn’t a plan in place to protect houses along that river, and why were they put in that position in the first place.
Her house flooded on 27 December, and she and Hope were evacuated by Mountain Rescue the following day, leaving their home in 5ft of contaminated water. A month later they are living upstairs in the only habitable room, with the constant noise of the driers on downstairs and the uncertainty of not knowing when life will return to normal.
Alison says: I feel a bit lost – it’s hard to get in contact with the insurance company. We’re waiting for the restoration people to get back to us to tell us how the drying process is going. We are ready to do the repairs but can’t until the insurance company, Churchill, approves the plans.
We’ve lost about £6,000 in terms of our possessions, plus a further £4,000 or £5,000 in damage, and that’s before you look at the inconvenience of having to live upstairs and the distress of it all.
We are very worried about whether we’ll get insurance again, and what the premium or excess will be if we do. I’ve read from estate agents that there may be an initial property price dip. Things may recover quickly but we are on unknown ground there.
There are reports the Foss Barrier wasn’t fit for purpose, wasn’t properly maintained. As a result I don’t feel secure in my home any more, and that’s very unnerving.
New move on insurance
Around 16,000 homes and businesses were flooded in England during December, the wettest ever month on record. And, to add insult to injury, some are now likely to be told their insurer has decided not to renew their policy.
However, there is a sliver of good news on the way for some of these people, and others living in flood-risk areas. From April there will be more insurers able to offer them flood insurance, as firms will be able to use the Flood Re scheme.
Flood Re, so-called because it is a “flood re-insurance” scheme, is an industry-wide initiative aimed at the estimated 350,000 UK households at serious risk of flooding and who struggle to access affordable cover.
Insurers will be able to pass on the flood risk element of eligible home insurance policies to Flood Re, which will charge the insurers a premium for each policy based on the property’s council tax band. “There should be a greater choice of home insurance policies for customers at risk of flooding, and those policies should be more affordable,” says Flood Re, which is a publicly accountable body with statutory objectives and powers.
To be eligible your home must have been built before 1 January 2009 and be used for residential purposes, be insured by the individual homeowner (not a company) and have a council tax band. Properties excluded from the scheme include bed and breakfasts paying business rates, blocks of residential flats and farm outbuildings.
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