Lincolnshire flooding leaves caravan owners in tears - manager

There have been "a lot of tears" from caravan owners after a static park in Lincolnshire flooded, the manager has said.

Part of Torksey Lock Caravan Park, 11 miles (17km) north-west of Lincoln, was hit by floodwater on Friday.

The River Trent at Torksey reached its highest recorded level on Saturday.

The county's resilience forum said river levels were "stabilising" and the Environment Agency (EA) was continuing to monitor the situation.

The park's manager Fraser Turner said most residents who were evacuated on Friday had gone home or were staying with family and friends.

"There's been a lot of tears and a lot of upset, people don't like losing their property," he said.

"It's been hard, but we will get there, we've done it before we will do it again."

Mr Turner said the flood water had knocked out the electricity and the drainage to the 35 caravans at the park.

"We've probably lost about 14 or 16 up to now, but we're still counting and just as many again are at risk," he said.

"There's obviously nothing we can do at the minute, we are waiting for it to recede."

Park resident Lee Watson, from Doncaster, said the water had just "crept up and up".

He said: "It's come out of nowhere, we didn't think it would come this high.

"You can't stop it and it just destroys everything in its path."

Mr Watson said his caravan was "knee-high" in water.

"All the wood is ruined, the floor will be gone, anything we didn't move to higher ground last night will be soaked in this brown, muddy water," he added.

The River Trent's levels at Torksey stood at 24 ft 4 in (7.42m) at 12:15 GMT, according to the government's measuring station in the area.

The previous highest level recorded was 23 ft 9 in (7.31m) in November 2000.

Chief fire officer and chair of the county's resilience forum Mark Baxter said the levels were as high as ever recorded at Torskey Lock and it was the area they were "monitoring most closely".

"Though the levels are broadly stabilising at the moment at the moment, so we've got teams through the Environment Agency and Fire and Rescue teams down there to keep continually assessing the situation," he said.

The Environment Agency (EA) said: "River levels remain high at the Torksey river gauge as a result of Storm Henk.

"Consequently, flooding is expected to continue."

They said they expected river levels to remain high until Sunday and 21 flood warnings remained in place across Lincolnshire.

Mr Baxter said elsewhere it was an "improving picture".

He said: "In general the water levels are receding and the river banks are managing to contain the water."

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