Storm Desmond

I'm not 100% sure but I think this is an archive photo. Boats on floating pontoons and mooring buoys should not really be affected by the floods, unless they are in the path of strong currents, but extreme winds can cause problems. However, it is the people in flooded homes I feel most for, a truly awful thing to happen. We got some of this in our village in 2007, and it was dreadful to see.
 
The pics are current ones. We have members of the Sealine forum based up there and it's a real mess. The pontoons are fixed and it looks like the boats have been dragged under by their ropes.
 
I'm a flood rescue technician for a volunteer independent lifeboat. We were in Carlisle Sunday rescuing people from their flooded homes, our 6 man team rescued 80 people, 5 dogs and 2 cats.

Things that were far from normal became the norm, like driving our jet drive flood boat up people's drives, up to their front doors, rescuing them and then doing a three point turn in the front garden and back out. All of course in the dark as power had gone off.

There was somewhere in the region of 15 boats working our sector, at times there was a traffic jam at the casualty reception bringing people ashore.

My navigation training was based on being at sea, leading lines, buoyage, lighthouses etc. This was "right at the second set of lights, then left at the post office" stuff.

The people of Cumbria made us very welcome, bringing drinks and freshly baked cakes to keep us going.
 
There was a story on the radio this morning about a wedding reception in a pub that got cut off by the flood waters. They effectively had a lock-in for 70 hours until they were rescued.

Every cloud............ :)
 
mm42 said:
I'm a flood rescue technician for a volunteer independent lifeboat. We were in Carlisle Sunday rescuing people from their flooded homes, our 6 man team rescued 80 people, 5 dogs and 2 cats.
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Well done mm42, it must have been a great relief for the homeowners to see you.
 
mm42 said:
I'm a flood rescue technician for a volunteer independent lifeboat. We were in Carlisle Sunday rescuing people from their flooded homes, our 6 man team rescued 80 people, 5 dogs and 2 cats.

Things that were far from normal became the norm, like driving our jet drive flood boat up people's drives, up to their front doors, rescuing them and then doing a three point turn in the front garden and back out. All of course in the dark as power had gone off.

There was somewhere in the region of 15 boats working our sector, at times there was a traffic jam at the casualty reception bringing people ashore.

My navigation training was based on being at sea, leading lines, buoyage, lighthouses etc. This was "right at the second set of lights, then left at the post office" stuff.

The people of Cumbria made us very welcome, bringing drinks and freshly baked cakes to keep us going.
Click to expand...

Great job, did you have the rescue boat to hand locally or was it towed/trucked in from elsewhere? It must have been a very tiring night. As I type Radio Devon are interviewing a local RNLI chap, one of a team of six, who assisted up there, so I guess there were many others involved.
 
longjohnsilver said:
Great job, did you have the rescue boat to hand locally or was it towed/trucked in from elsewhere? It must have been a very tiring night. As I type Radio Devon are interviewing a local RNLI chap, one of a team of six, who assisted up there, so I guess there were many others involved.
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Our team was a joint team put together by Surf Life Saving GB, a mixture of York Rescue, my team, and South Worcester Livesaving Club. SWLC brought the boats with them, two on a double stack trailer, a purpose built flood boat called a Rescue One Connector, which is a flat bottomed aluminium flood boat with a Yamaha jet outboard, and an Arancia surf boat with outboard. When we came off shift we were relieved by another SLSGB team of Wessex and Cornwall so we'd all made decent journeys.
 
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