Flooding Incident – 22nd January 16:50 – Norton – 08/2021
At 16:50 on the 22nd January despite the flood levels on the River Derwent flowing through Norton falling there was a significant volume of water reported as seeping from under a brick section of the flood defences along the river and flooding a field next to the river.
The view was that this had the potential to affect a large number of houses and a care home in Norton and could require speedy evacuation of residents.
The Local Resilience Forum and Environment Agency on site wanted to reinforce the wall with sandbags and deploy high volume pumps into the area to pump water back into the river. The challenge with this was that the fields between the railway line and the river were already flooded. Emergency staff on scene also had to coordinate their work around passing trains.
We were asked to provide a swift water and flood rescue team and our raft and sled to ferry the sandbags into the scene.
Augmented by a Swift Water Rescue Team from HM Coastguard Yorkshire & Lincolnshire we collectively waded through 100 metres of waist deep water each way as we moved in excess of 250 sandbags in the darkness through cold and contaminated flood water with air temperature around 2 degree C. At around 00:53 on the 23rd after approximately ten round trips delivering sandbags it was felt that the temporary works would hold and the pumps on scene would keep the levels down.
While this was taking place North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service, the Environment Agency, Ryedale District Council and others were delivering and operating more pumps in the area, delivering sandbags to the roadside, establishing rest centres and warning residents to be alert to the threat and move possessions upstairs.
Working as best we could within COVID guidelines we deployed 22 team members and two vehicles for just over ten hours returning to base and then home by 03:00. This was only after decontaminating and cleaning equipment as best we could on scene on the understanding that we would be called via normal channels if the situation degraded over the early morning hours. We now have a significant deep clean of kit needed over the weekend.
Additional thanks to the The Salvation Army and local takeaways for hot food and drinks overnight, Pickering and District Rotary Club who bought us the raft after our work in the 2015 York Floods and to Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team and other local Mountain Rescue England and Wales teams who were on standby to deploy if needed and to be on scene to replace us if the incident had run until after 06:00 in the morning.
