Floods batter Britain, hundreds rescued from inundated homes

Latest update : 2009-11-21

Torrential rains lashed parts of Britain, flooding homes and buildings as rescuers worked through the night to evacuate about 200 people from the northern English county of Cumbria.

AFP - Rescuers were working Friday to evacuate about 200 people by helicopter from a town after storms triggered flooding across parts of Britain, police said.

Hundreds of homes were flooded after torrential rain battered parts of northern England, northwest Wales and western Scotland throughout Thursday, rescue officials said.

Dozens of people have fled their homes for emergency shelters set up across the hard hit shire of Cumbria, where main roads were blocked and 21 schools were closed earlier Thursday, rescue officials said.

Floodwaters have cut off the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth in northwestern England, where evacuations by the Royal Air Force were underway.

"The fire service and RAF are in the process of evacuating around 200 people, via helicopter, from the main street and the square areas of Cockermouth," a spokesman for Cumbria police said.

"They are being moved to a reception centre at Cockermouth Secondary School," he said, adding some 1,145 homes in the area were without electricity.

John Carlin, owner of the Allerdale Court Hotel in the town centre, said the amount of rainfall to hit the area was "staggering".

"I have lived here for 15 years and have never seen anything like it."

"At two o'clock it was raining heavily but there was nothing here but now there is four feet of water outside my front door," he said.

"It's desperate. The town centre is completely flooded, the only people out there at the moment are the emergency services. The water is up to the waists of the firefighters.

"We are under six inches of water ourselves but we have still got electricity and the fire service have told us they are on standby if they need to evacuate us," he added.

Although waters in some areas were stable, police said river levels were still unstable in Cockermouth and nearby Keswick.

"In Keswick and Cockermouth we are anticipating the levels will rise further, we just do not know by how much," Chief Superintendent Steve Johnson told the BBC.

The Environment Agency has in place six severe flood warnings, where there is extreme danger to life and property, in Cumbria. Reports said another 10 were in place in Scotland.