Somerset Floods: '10 years on it is still traumatic'

"Evacuate. This is a police helicopter. Flood danger is imminent. Evacuate."

Ten years ago, a helicopter circled above villages on the Somerset Levels and Moors and issued the order for residents to evacuate as the water levels kept rising.

We speak to three people affected by the Somerset Floods in 2014 about the events that made worldwide headlines.

James Winslade and his family had farmed on the Somerset Levels for three generations at his farm in West Yeo near Moorland.

He said the moment when the helicopter flew overhead had caused "so much panic".

Mr Winslade said: "I think the helicopter was unnecessary and caused a lot of panic with locals already stressed. We all knew we had to evacuate anyway.

"The water was getting so high, I'm six foot and it was over the hedge behind me."

"We farm 900 acres across the Levels and every bit was underwater, including my parents' house and our house," Mr Winslade said.

"My mum and dad had the water level over the first pane of the kitchen window and we had it about half a metre in ours.

"People forget, this wasn't just one or two days, the water was there for three months on our soil and completely ruined it."

Mr Winslade said it was a "huge effort" to get back to normal and get their homes sorted out.

"It was very stressful, I had to concentrate on the cattle, they couldn't get out themselves and I was wholly responsible for the cattle," he said.

"Jen, my wife, got out with her horses and with her children and found a house we could live in while we were still evacuating the animals.

"That took 48 hours and not only did we evacuate our cows [from the land], we did several neighbours too which went on for more than a week."

Mr Winslade said the impact it had on his family during the "traumatic" floods was huge.

"My father had dementia at the time and he never really came back as the same person after the floods," he said.

"We'd moved and everything had changed. That was hard."

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Mr Winslade said he could remember the floods "like yesterday" even though it was 10 years ago.

"You look at the kids now and they are as tall as me! That's what makes me realise it was so long ago," he added.

Despite all that happened, he said moving away had never crossed his mind.

"A year later there was a Defra report saying if the river was dredged, then nine out of 10 properties wouldn't have been flooded," he said.

"Why should we move? My grandfather, father and myself have farmed all our lives and nothing like this ever happened before."

Maria and Phil Maye lived in the village of Fordgate, on the Levels, and moved into their "doer-upper" home in 2010.

Four years later in 2014, their newly-renovated house was flooded.

Mr Maye said: "We were looking through the old photographs and we almost feel detached from it now.

"Afterwards it's such a traumatic experience. Each time anyone around the UK gets flooded, there's tears in my eyes. You know what they're going through.

"Time heals I suppose. It's when other people get flooded now and you understand and it gives a bit of a pain."

Mrs Maye said that she remembered the day water levels started to get higher.

She said: "There was rhyne (a small river) by the house and I actually went for a walk when the water started to rise.

"I put my wellies on and I thought, it's not going to come into the house. The following night, the water was filling up the house.

"I will never forget the smell of the house when it was flooded, full of muck and the smell of food in the freezer.

"It was just horrible and you just looked at your possessions and there's nothing you could salvage. Everything was gone. Sentimental things we lost."

The couple were among those evacuated and went initially to the village hall. They lived in a flat in Taunton before moving back to the house, where they lived on the driveway in a caravan.

Mrs Maye said: "It was brilliant as we could live outside our home and then go back inside the top of our house."

She continued: "People helped us so much in these times. I will always remember the kind gestures people did during that awful time.

"Eventually we decided to move to Bridgwater as the flooding did have an impact for me.

"Every time it rained, I worried and that's why we moved. It did influence our new house choice as it's now we live on a hill."

Claire Chedzoy is one of few people that have actually moved to the Somerset Levels in recent years and started a business.

With her husband, she runs the Burrow Munch café in Burrowbridge. The building was completely submerged under floodwater during the Somerset floods in 2014.

Ms Chedzoy said: "Ten years ago, this building used to be basket works and I just think they had enough of the floods.

"My husband and I wanted to open up a business for a while and decided this was the perfect place to do it. Forgot the history, the dredging has improved.

"The Somerset Levels are designed to flood, but it was so bad in 2014 but that was a combination of everything and not dredging the river and just so much rain.

"We lived in North Curry at the time which wasn't badly affected, but it seems like yesterday. We just expect flooding now every year but hopefully nothing like 2014 again.

"A decade ago, it was so high up you couldn't see the roof, and the last few years it's just been waist-level.

"When it rains the first thing we do now is look at the cameras and check. The locals all talk to each other and it's like an army if there's even a whiff of flooding."

She added that it "feels quite special" to have "brought this really iconic building back".

"People come into the café and just can't believe it's the same place that had a picture in the national newspapers with flooding up to the roof," she said.

"This site was fully underwater and we've brought it back to life with a business that's booming."

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