Dramatic footage shows a woman being rescued from a submerged car in Leicestershire after a critical incident was declared in the region because of wide-scale flooding.
A restaurant owner in the village of Great Glen went to the aid of a woman who was struggling in her submerged car after severe flooding hit the area on Monday morning.
Cimi Kazazi, who runs the Italian Greyhound gastropub, waded through chest-high freezing water to get the woman out of her car and bring her to safety after his neighbours called to him for help.
“I just walked out, I knew that it was dangerous but I was only concerned about her. It was so cold, really bad. But because I wasn’t thinking for me, I was thinking for them, I didn’t feel the cold,” he said.
He said he had been inundated with messages from people across the world praising him for his bravery, and he was “proud” that he had done “something with my heart, without even thinking”.
But by Tuesday morning his thoughts had turned to his restaurant, which has been devastated by the flood water.
Thick mud coated every surface, with furniture and glass bottles scattered across the room as if there had been an explosion. Worse still, all the appliances, including fridges, freezers and cellar pumping equipment, had been destroyed.
“I can’t even bear to look at it,” said Kazazi, who has owned the restaurant for two years. “I don’t want to say a number [for the cost of the damage], I can’t, I’m scared to say it. I just hope the insurance will cover it.
“People were finding bottles of whisky floating in the car park. Thousands of pounds is just gone. Next week we have so many bookings, I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”
He said although the area had been flooded a year ago, it had been nothing on the scale they had seen this time round, described by some as the worst flood the village had seen in decades.
The River Sence reached it highest recorded level in history during the flood.
Residents said they had concerns about the number of houses that had been built on floodplains in the vicinity of the village. There was particular alarm about a proposed 4,000-home development on the outskirts of Great Glen.
“People will be very rightly angry. There was a lot of snow runoff, and the fields have been full of water for months; it was the perfect storm,” said Peter Scott, 72, a resident and parish councillor who spent several hours directing cars away from flood waters after a number became stuck.
“It’s surprising how people can get stranded immediately. The emergency services were stretched to the very limit so there was just nobody there, so you step up to help because you don’t want to see a car ruined, or somebody drowning.”
East Midlands ambulance service declared a critical incident for the first time in its history, with flooding partly responsible for the level of escalation.
The service said “significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals and flooding across the East Midlands” had led to it putting out “more ambulance resource than ever before” when it triggered the alert at 6pm on Monday.
Leicestershire fire and rescue service said 59 people were rescued from flooding incidents across the county on Monday, including people in stranded vehicles and flooded homes.
A severe flood warning, indicating danger to life, was issued for parts of Leicestershire on Tuesday, as heavy rainfall and melting snow meant river levels continued to rise, with areas along the banks of the River Soar particularly at risk.
Source: theguardian.com
