The great flood

[Llechwedd]

I remember wading down St Seiriol's Road to see if relatives were ok.  Coming towards me was the inshore lifeboat carrying "driver" a couple , a sheep dog and a black bin bag of stuff.  The water was 4" deep.  I fell about laughing much to their chagrin!

[Trojan]

Good work, Suepp.   

Yes, excellent. 

[Trojan]

I remember wading down St Seiriol's Road to see if relatives were ok.  Coming towards me was the inshore lifeboat carrying "driver" a couple , a sheep dog and a black bin bag of stuff.  The water was 4" deep.  I fell about laughing much to their chagrin!

 L0L

[Trojan]

Regarding the 1993 floods in Llandudno. One insurance assessor told me that during his visit to one estate in the town, he saw the same three piece suite 7 times. He also said that he was amazed looking at the claims, that at the time of the Llandudno floods there had been no rubber backed carpet anywhere, it was all Wilton.

 

[Trojan]

I always remember watching television that evening, when all of a sudden the living room carpet started moving in a ripple effect.

I thought I was hallucinating at first, then the carpet became wet & soggy as the water level rose.

I had to laugh at the next-door neighbour with his back door open, trying in vain to brush the rising water out of his kitchen.

I'd never seen "rapids" swirling past the gate post and down the driveway before though.

The calm after the storm was eerie, as myself and a friend waded along Conway Road in the tropical humidity.

An experience I'll never forget, to say the least.

[suepp]

Good work, Suepp.   

Yes, excellent. 

Cheers ! came across the newspaper in my parents' attic. There's a report in it about a third of the Ski slope being washed away, Mr Alan Bainbridge Director is quoted as saying " Our drainage tank holds around 5,000 gallons of water but what came down last night was far more than that. We have still got the tide marks from the 15 foot pool of water which collected at the bottom of the slope"

[Llechwedd]

The water was funneling down Old Road and would have been great for white water rafting..... for the very brave.

[Michael]

Hello Waffagolf. I reply to your recent post, Bodelwyddan Castle was used a s an emergency sleeping station on the first night. I dont know whether or not the Mayor was there, but I am absolutely certain there was no giving away of £15 or anything else that night. Your friend from the well known international charity might have been there at a later date, and, indeed, might have helped with giving out cash to someone----but it certainly wasent an emergency payout at the time. I was driving one of my own coaches that night getting people from Emrys ap Iwan school in Abergele to the Castle. They were put in the school from Towyn as a stopgap. Bodelwyddan Castle was in a state of controlled caous, literally hundreds trying to get some sleep on the floor, social workers everywhere trying to reunite families and the last thing anyone thought of was cash either giving or receiving.

[Michael]

An afterthought. Don't forget this was the largest peacetime evacuation of people ever in the U.K.   Over 3,500 on the first night. I remember at around 2 a.m. I happened to be standing alongside someone, I dont know who or what he was but he was MR.BIG in Clwyd Social Services or similar and he was on a phone strung up in a temporary fashion in Bodelwyddan Castle and he was doing his best to fend off the national press who were after how many deaths etc etc for next days papers. Of course, thank God, there were no fatalities due entirely to the fact that the flood happened midday, in daylight. If it had happened in the middle of the night it would have been a very, very different story.

[Ian]

My wife was trapped in the hairdressers' in George street.  The rapidly rising water had made the door impossible to open until the fire people smashed the glass plate.

[Trojan]

One aspect I have just remembered, was the temporary static caravans that were used to house people made homeless by the flood.

I remember some on the Trinity Ave playing fields and also on the green off Maesdu Road opposite the Tre Cwm Estate flats.

[Trojan]

ITN news clip:

http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//ITN/1993/06/11/BSP110693012/?s=Llandudno&st=0&pn=3

[Trojan]

One aspect I have just remembered, was the temporary static caravans that were used to house people made homeless by the flood.

I remember some on the Trinity Ave playing fields and also on the green off Maesdu Road opposite the Tre Cwm Estate flats.

An insight into the flood damage.

http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//ITN/1993/10/15/BSP151093032/?s=Llandudno&st=0&pn=4

The clip shows the static caravans and the one & only Tommy Roache.

[Waffagolf]

The £15 was indeed paid out to people as previously stated. But as you say, it was chaos, so maybe some missed out.

I have loads of press cuttings from the time of the Llandudno floods. Dwr Cymru worked out that in the three hours that the rain fell, approx. 500,000 million gallons of rain fell over Llandudno & the surrounding area. Half of it came in my house I think. I lost my first ever teddy too.

The powers that be never declared it a disaster because they said no one had died. But if you look back at the Obituary colums over the 6/12 months after the floods and look at the addresses, you will see that people did indeed die as a result, but not actually on the day of the rainfall. Therefore, it was a disaster.

I remember the story of the looter dressed in a wet suit in the Liddell drive area. The police kept denying that looting was going on, but it was. I was myself in the back of a TA truck as the TA's were ordered out of a particular area, and remember protesting to all and sundry that we shouldn't leave the area to the looters, but I was simply told they had their orders to withdraw. It was appalling, but it wouldn't have been safe for me to stay there by myself.

[DaveR]

Here's another one:
http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//ITN/1993/06/15/BSP150693022/?s=llandudno&st=0&pn=2

So many people were not insured - crazy. Contents Insurance isn't expensive.