“I’m sure you’ll be amazed when you see the size of this river. It’s tiny, more like a drain or a stream than a river. Can you believe it? This little stream flooded about 800 houses locally here. We had a meter and half in our house and that’s about a mile away from this river. It looks like a benign little stream right now but its different when the flood waters come, I can tell you that.”

“The water was like a series of fountains when it came in through the house initially. Well it was shooting up, and in fact the pressure was so high that it blew the boards off the floor. We had no prior warning that this was a flood area. There was nothing in the deeds, the estate agents said nothing, the people who owned the house said nothing about that risk. We found out later that there had been floods, but a long while ago.”