HIGHWAYS AND WATERWAYSAA specialist team to the rescue in the Cumbria fl oods – a report from Louise Limb

They called it a ‘thousand year event’ on every news channel the other week , though if we’re all still around, the odds of an intense deluge like the one that swept across Cumbria happening again sooner than that are somewhat less than you may think, if climate change continues to gallop along at the pace it appears to be doing. I’d interviewed Richard Westmoreland, AA Special Operations Response Team (SORT) swiftwater rescue technician and regular AA patrol, only a week or so earlier about sensible winter motoring and we’d talked about how he had just come back from north east Scotland where the priority had been to clear roads of drowned vehicles and work around landslides. So, as news of the ghastly weather event unfolded it was no surprise to fi nd my trusty transistor relaying rescue-weary AA spokesmen on the spot in Cockermouth enlightening eager Radio Four news reporters with cautionary tales of water related driving lunacy. While lessons had been learned for the relatively new SORT team from previous fl ood situations, Cumbria was to test the team’s resourcefulness and ask questions that might ultimately result in expanding their role in working alongside the emergency services. As Richard said, ‘we’ve waited a year for a really big chance to test the team’.

There have been more than a dozen deployments since the SORT team’s inception at the beginning of 2009. John Seymour, the AA’s Special Operations Manager, had monitored the Meteorological Offi ce and Environment Agency forecasts and by Wednesday 18th November 2009 knew that there was a possibility of problem weather in Cumbria. He deployed two of the team’s Land Rovers to the South Lakes area, where the guys set up a mini control centre in the Premier Inn at Kendal, where they would be able to reach the north and south of the Lakes area fairly easily. Darron Burness, duty manager for the SORT team on the ground from Wednesday until the Sunday monitored operations via ‘AAHELP’ (the AA’s deployment system) on a specially equipped laptop.

After Richard arrived on Wednesday evening and through Thursday it became apparent that the situation was even more acute and more extensive than was at fi rst anticipated. It would become county wide as mountain becks became torrents and the Lakes breached their banks to include any roads and habitation running alongside, as well as swollen rivers and bridges at risk of collapse. Of course we will never forget that a vital road bridge in Workington was swept away, along with the unfortunate police offi cer working on it at the time. Richard described the rain as the worst he had ever experienced, ‘

A SORT Team 110 fi nds a rare abandoned AA box on the A591

cars are ‘moving targets’ abandoned Ford Mondeo after aquaplaning on the road to

Kirkstone Pass

abandoned Mondeo has fl oated to banking at the waters’ new edge.

at the height of the fl ooding many roads in the Lake

District were passable only

to appropriately equipped vehicles.

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HIGHWAYS AND WATERWAYS like having a fire hose aimed at your face’. The double winch and snorkel equipped Defender 110s would be essential in reaching not only AA members’ vehicles stranded in flood waters but those which blocked approach roads to both the AA and the emergency services. The team ended up recovering plenty of non members as part of the emergency response. Two additional team Land Rovers arrived in the area on the Thursday. On that day alone Richard and his team mate Stephen Liles pulled thirty cars to safe ground, where a normal AA van would take over. It is vital that vehicles are recovered from flood water as quickly as possible as all kinds of noxious substances start to leak into the groundwater from the unfortunate motor.

Over the next four days, the level of intensity remained the same, each day the water level receding and rising again as water poured down from the tops of the fells and filled rivers and lakes. The team would find roads around the Lakes waist deep in the morning, revisit to find it had receded to about knee depth by evening, only to discover the next day that levels had risen once again to their former levels and abandoned cars and other debris floating around in their path. In the nature of flooding such stretches of road would be interspersed with islands of dry land and here they would find vehicles stranded between the newly established temporary inlets.

One such example was a large hotel on the shores of Derwentwater, situated at the foot of the Lodore Falls and a likely hotspot. One well-heeled couple had travelled from Cheshire for a long weekend away and had been told on the phone as they approached cautiously, that if they had a 4x4 they ‘would be laughing’...They were driving a brand new 35th Anniversary Range Rover; you know, the strictly Limited Edition supercharged V8 one they only made very few of? By the time the trusty AA Land Rover had waded through the door trim deep water the following morning to find it a hundred yards to the Keswick side of the hotel, the car was bobbing about against the fence on the wrong side of the road. The unfortunate occupants had been obliged to exit the vehicle Dukes of Hazzard style, in the dark and water had then flowed in through in through the open windows. Once the electrics failed the windows jammed and Richard, mightily impressed with the quality of door seals on the Range Rover, found the water still up to the steering wheel. Not so impressive was the state of the now written off £85,000 vehicle and all the couple’s luggage which floated around the indoor swimming pool like so much designer flotsam. Once the doors were released to even up the water pressure, careful towing eased the Range Rover back on to dry land. Richard and Stephen of course had to fix the recovery sling to the vehicle well under water, so the full fireman’s dry suit and buoyancy aid came into its own, as it did on more than one occasion.

This story also illustrates a point that Richard

debris and sludge are left when the water recedes.

SORT team Land Rover moves safely through water at a steady pace

swiftwater technicians like Richard carry full PPE equipment

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came back to again and again. He found that the inhabitants of the Lakes were so used to rain on a biblical scale, Seathwaite coming close to Eskdalemuir as one of the wettest places in Britain, that they had a cavalier attitude towards flooding. Yes they would get through the puddles, no problem, and the intensity took them by surprise. No one, 4x4 or otherwise, would be ‘laughing’, especially when 40 luxury yachts sank at Ambleside tethered to the floor of Windermere by tight moorings and people were beginning to lose everything they owned. As road after road was shut, the Police controlling operations from Silver Command at Penrith ( a subsidiary Bronze Command having been set up at Cockermouth) allowed the AA Land Rovers through each road block. The team was able to update police about abandoned vehicles and potential emergencies, like the Ford Mondeo they found on the A592 to Kirkstone Pass, upturned and straddling a wall, the owner nowhere to be found, the car having aquaplaned.

Another Mondeo caused a stir on the A592 down Ullswater. Each day, the team faced the prospect of driving through incredibly hazardous situations. Not only did water in the dark or round each corner present fallen, floating trees, it contained boats, gas bottles, all manner of marine paraphernalia and vehicles which presented moving targets and with the rain so severe that with full wipers they still couldn’t see anything clearly, the added danger of dislodged drain covers had the team on full alert. With the cover removed, a drain creates a whirlpool that can trap a wheel and worse, if a person stumbles in the dark, can kill quite easily. This particular Mondeo was part of one such collection of debris. Abandoned on Thursday night, the lake had carried it into a banking by the next morning and as well as collecting some branches, the broken back window sported a canoe paddle... and was still up a creek...

Black humour seems to pervade such situations and several of Richard’s anecdotes will provide pub fireside stories for years to come. One young couple in an Astra were rescued by the occupants of a holiday cottage near Pooley Bridge , who had somehow managed to retrieve the car before the AA reached it. It was a ‘driven through’. There are three degrees of vehicle flooding; ‘driven through water’ means that the engine has been given a good soaking but is recoverable, ‘stuck in water’ is slightly more troublesome but the AA has secret ways of starting them but ‘under water’ is fairly self explanatory. It was Thursday, the rain was unbelievable and Richard, with Stephen, amazingly, managed to get the Astra going. No sooner had they taken the parts off, dried them in the back of the 110 and put them back in Vauxhall than they filled with water again. The two squinted at each other across the Land Rover bonnet, through the fire hose rain and wept with laughter. Another young lad from Liverpool, up for the weekend with his girlfriend drove his Ford Focus up past the wheel arches

SORT Team Land Rover takes a well earned break while listening for rescue requests

flooding from the lake meant water was relatively clear. This is not the case in urban areas

Rain so heavy it is difficult to see the road.

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into what had become Ullswater. Richard leaned in the driver’s window, pointed back up to dry land and an abandoned Land Cruiser and asked him in that fatherly tone adopted by traffic officers, ‘what made you think that you could get through this if he couldn’t?’

The photo opportunity that everyone missed also presented the team with the opportunity to use their skill and training to the full. When a call near Cockermouth took Richard and Stephen via a stranded Defender 90 Hard Top, they were presented with a girl seated on the roof of her Land Rover, clutching her now confused spaniel. The water was half way up the windscreen and covering the steering wheel. Firstly and carefully, Richard waded out and rescued the dog and then helped the girl down from the roof. They then winched the Land Rover out, which was no mean task as the water had filled the rear tub. Once they managed to open the rear door the job was made easier though a few belongings disappeared down river. People were ignoring the road closure signs if there was no bobby guarding them, putting themselves and others at risk.

One AA Land Rover crewed by Ian Johnson and Claire Pirie attended an elderly couple who found their weekend away was temporarily interrupted by their BMW experiencing a ‘driven through’. Richard and Stephen joined them to ensure that the couple reached their hotel where they could arrange a hire car while their own was relayed back home to Peterborough. The female passenger arranged herself in the front seat of Stephen’s Land Rover but she began panicking as water commenced seeping through the door bottom. Stephen, at the wheel, simply asked her to lift her feet up ( she was wearing smart high heels) until they reached their destination and then open the door to let the water out when they stopped so she could put her feet down again. That’s Land Rovers for you!

The AA has 24 swiftwater rescue technicians – a mixture of patrols and other employees – in the SORT team so far with another seven in training. Assistance had been given not only to AA members but the team played an important role in keeping routes clear of obstructions for the emergency services and assisting other responders with their rescue tasks. It is however the gratitude on people’s faces that Richard finds most rewarding, as when he helped start a ‘driven through’ Grand Cherokee which was taking a party of elderly ladies to a Day Centre. Once the passengers had been assisted to dry land, the vehicle was attended to by the SORT team and despite the complex electrics, was rendered useable. As he finishes the interview Richard laughs as he tells me of the beaming faces in the Cherokee as it pulls away, its doors locking and unlocking and the windows zooming up and down in a merry dance of confused electronics. LRWLRW wishes to thank The AA for their unstinting help in preparing this article, especially Richard Westmoreland, John Seymour and Gavin Hill Smith.

Windermere extends to inlcude

ambleside

Ullswater breaching its banks meant waves would add to the

deep water driving.

Richard in less hassled times!

keeping a sensible distance from fellow Team Land Rover

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