A river runs through it . . .

Keith Richardson gives a personal account of the flooding in his home town of Keswick.

 The River Greta burst its banks and quite literally ran through Keswick after rains that were described as of ‘biblical proportions’ and a ‘once in every 1,000 years event’. Raging torrents of water made our rivers and streams unrecognisable and created havoc on their way from the Lakeland fells to the sea. The flooding at Cockermouth – where the rivers Cocker and Derwent combined forces – was the worst.

And there was tragedy at Workington where the River Derwent, which begins its journey to the sea in Borrowdale, washed away the massive Northside stone-built road bridge in the middle of the night and with it claimed the life of a policeman, PC Bill Barker, who was standing on the bridge, preventing other people from venturing onto the bridge after it was discovered that the structure had started to crack. He plunged with the masonry from the bridge into the fast moving water of the river below and was swept away to the sea. His uniformed body was found hours later in the sea at Allonby.

Today, two days after the worst of the flooding on Thursday / Friday, the River Greta has receded to reasonable levels but it has started to rain heavily again this afternoon and overhead I can hear the chatter of a helicopter; a familiar sound in recent days as hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in Keswick, Cockermouth and Workington. As night falls the rain is lashing against the window and the wind is shredding the last Autumn leaves from the cherry tree in the garden. The prospect is bleak.

Here in Keswick the worst of the rainfall was preceded by the customary restless nights of gale force winds and driving rain – something that has been characteristic of our changing weather patterns in recent years. But it usually happens with greater frequency in January / February. Perhaps we’ve still got that to come?

The River Greta was already bank high when a prolonged period of heavy rain (the wettest since records began in 1766 - 377mm fell in 36 hours at Seathwaite) proved the breaking point and pushed the river not so much over the edge but into a state that no one had witnessed before. If the river was human it would be described as being in a blind fury, hell bent on causing as much destruction to anything that stood in its way and, in turn, going out of its way to spread its mayhem as far and as wide as possible.

This was certainly not the gentle and scenic River Greta by which I have spent many hours walking, fishing, and watching wildlife.

The power, force and speed of the river had to be seen to be believed. I was out at about 8am on the Thursday morning. In judging the height of the water I always take as my first parameter the island in the river at the bottom of Windebrowe Avenue where I live. It was completely covered by the river, the first sign that this was something out of the ordinary and not simply the Greta in spate mode. Only the silver birch trees, standing firm against the water, revealed that there was in fact an island there at all.

Over the first (the new) bridge into Fitz Park, Peter Towers, of Keswick Parks, was opening the grid mechanism on the ‘escape’ tunnel to the side of the bridge. Further down stream the water was already starting to wash into the tunnel beneath Station Road where the two parks meet. The water was level with the parapet on the lower park side of the bridge, adjacent to the conker trees. I stood at the water’s edge and realised that one slip into the torrent would prove fatal, such was its speed and force; no one, once in its embrace and carried along, would have stood an earthly of getting back to land and anyone attempting a rescue would probably have suffered the same fate. I stood in the lee of the bridge for a while as the rain pelted down and giant waves rolled past, more akin to something you might expect at sea and not on the beck.  At that stage the river had not quite touched the wooden walkway that leads to the youth hostel. Later the walkway became part of the river and further downstream a massive chunk of masonry was sheared from the corner of one of the buildings on Greta Street.

Across the beck from my standpoint near the bridge, a man stood at the lighted window of his flat and looked out anxiously at the river racing past below him. The man at his window, a square of bright orange / yellow, provided a stark contrast to the gloom outside and he looked helpless in the face of the fast-flowing spate river; a metaphor for Man’s fallibility when faced by Nature at its most awesome.

I walked on and saw that the river was level with the stonewall just below the footpath that runs parallel to it in Lower Fitz Park. At the windows of houses on Greta Street more people looked out of the backs of their homes at the rising river.

The flood had marooned the cricket pavilion and the new football field was virtually under water.

On Crosthwaite Road the river was only a couple of feet at most below the banking that runs alongside the footpath and the road. Although the river was threateningly high there was still no real indication, for me at least, of what was to come in the next few hours with severe flooding, people and homes evacuated, business and sporting premises swamped. And all the distress and repercussions that flooding brings with it. For many people the memory of what happened five years ago was still fresh in their minds. Surely it couldn’t happen again, just when life and their homes had seemingly returning to normal and measures put in place in the interim would surely protect them from that sort of scenario once again? But for many people living in the less elevated areas of the town and next to the river, heavy rain and a rising beck is akin to a recurring nightmare. It only serves as a painful reminder of the last time their homes and businesses were violated by the water.

Only days before Susan Appleby, the wife of our cricket club treasurer, Edgar, had spoken to me about her fears that they might be flooded for a second time and this only days after they had retired from their book stall on the market and were looking forward to a more leisurely life from the comfort of their home on Crosthwaite Road. Susan was, quite frankly, beside herself with worry and her concern was, sadly, fully justified. Later on that Thursday they had to be evacuated by dinghy from How Keld, leaving their home and possessions to the rising water and its muddy, stinking content.

They were not alone. It was a story that was to be repeated time and again in the immediate area and further afield. There was little or nothing that anyone could do except retreat, keep out of harms way, do as much as they could to protect life and property and wait for the water to, hopefully, relent. Testing times tend to bring out the best in people and, once again, the police, the rescue services, volunteers and the people of the town pulled together. Despite all our technology, brainpower, space travel and the apparent ‘superiority’ of humans on planet earth, we are really quite insignificant when the environment – with which we may irredeemably have tampered – flexes its muscles. Nature inevitably has the final say.

This was far, far worse than the flooding in January 2005. This was environmental anarchy. Several hours later the transformation was complete and the river had completely flooded the lower part of the town. Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite were joined at the hip and many places were impassable or cordoned off. The rugby club suffered yet again (how utterly sickening for them) the new £1m football pavilion came close to going the same way and their recently-laid new pitch was completely under water. Tons of silt, mud, stone and debris tossed out of the river was strewn over fields and decorated hedgerows. As the light, such as it was, faded into dark and the rain continued to fall, Keswick appeared to be more or less deserted. Police, firemen and volunteers in bright yellow were evident knocking on house doors and warning of the spreading flood as the waters flowed onto Penrith Road opposite the Conservative Club and advanced up Greta Street and the slope towards the war memorial. Police tape across the road barred the way to pedestrians and cars – not that there were many. The occasional car headlights flickered across the river and it was frightening to behold.

At Booths a delivery truck, its lights still flashing, was sinking ever deeper in the waters. From the cab of van on the town side of Greta Bridge, two yellow-jacketed men prevented anyone from venturing onto the bridge itself. The fear was that it might collapse, one of many bridges in the county that are now closed until their strength or otherwise can be determined after supports were eroded by the torrent.

Daylight brought the full impact of the flood home. Once again the lower Fitz Park footpath that runs along the river had been ripped up and deposited many yards away, like so many layers of carpet, on the old football field. One section of tarmac, in what would normally have been a goalmouth, was in the form of a spiral or upside down cone. From a distance I thought it must be mud or silt. But no, close examination showed that it was tarmac, twisted and formed into a strange sculpture.

And the people of Keswick, and many others elsewhere in the stricken towns and villages of Cumbria, began the long, soul destroying process of putting their livelihoods, their homes and their lives together again.

This rain, almost monsoon like, the high winds that invariably accompany the rain, and the regular flooding that we are now having to endure in Lakeland and in Keswick all smack of climate change.

If there is anyone out there who is still in denial then they should have visited Keswick, Cockermouth, Workington and the surrounding land and villages, talked to the people, witnessed the devastation, and they might, just might, form a different view. All the evidence points to Man and pollution being to blame for what is happening now, not just here in Lakeland but all over Planet Earth and in many different forms, whether it’s the icecaps melting, excessive heat, excessive rain, storms, or the burning sun scorching through holes in the ozone layer.

We are reaping the whirlwind and will continue to do so unless World governments unite and get really serious in trying to deal with the threat to our environment. It may not be too late but all the warning signs are quite clearly there for all to see. For me it’s the sight of a twisted spiral of tarmac emerging out of a playing field in Fitz Park where only blades of grass should be.