At 6pm we discovered the drains in our backyard were backing up and after taking a swift trot up the street, we realised the drain closest to us had started to overflow. Several others nearby were almost at overflow stage and others closer to my Mum's house were still below street level.
At this stage, there were no flood warnings in place for our local area but I contacted United Utilities via Twitter as I was aware that the fire engines were already at the next village to us trying to pump water away from a row of houses. UU wanted to get someone to contact us but we said to hold fire as others were more in need than us at the present time.... but they told us to get back to them in an hour to follow up. We decided we could possibly hold on when it got to 7:15pm and would deal with it as long as we could as hubby still had the old pool pump he used to use when he did some odd jobs in Cyprus.
As 8:30pm arrived, we hooked the pool pump up and got it running..... We knew we had a hosepipe long enough to push the water into the drains higher up the road and away from other homes. Then the power supply tripped
We reset it and it tripped again, and again, and again... We were left with no overhead lights but the plug sockets in the kitchen, main bedroom and living room were still working and the central heating boiler was off too but staying cautious, we decided it wasn't worth trying to use the pump and blow everything. Our neighbours had overhead lights but no working sockets.
And so the neighbourly process began: we made them mugs of tea and charged up their mobile phone while they told us the power had tripped like this once before, many years before
At 22:00hrs, this was how our newly created side yard looked:
The tin blue planter and the blue striped plastic bucket are floating here in around 6 inches of water:
By 11:30pm the water was within less than 2 inches of coming up the step at the front of the house and into the porch and the living room. At the kitchen door in the side yard, we had a little more wriggle room. Thankfully, it stopped raining and seemed to be holding off so we decided all we could do was head to bed and see what happened, hoping the rain would stay away.
At 07:00hrs the water had completely disappeared from the side and the front of the house.... it was still very wet, but when we tried the power an hour later, all the electricity supply came back as normal. We'd kept the fridges and freezers closed throughout and our food was still frozen - and the tonic water still nicely chilled
Four doors away from us, this is how the local golf course at Knott End looked at lunchtime today as we headed out to buy wellies. The birds and local wildlife seemed to think we have a new nature reserve:
Meanwhile, the terraced houses at Sunnyside in the next village of Preesall are still underwater
Apparently, the pumping station at the local dyke is still way above it's usual "high" of 2.09m. It went up to 2.45m last night and currently is around 2.2m.
Welcome to England!
