'I won't look out of the window anymore'

RESIDENTS OF BULWER STREET RECALL THE DEVASTATION THEY WENT THROUGH EXACTLY A YEAR AGO WHEN FLOODS WRECKED THEIR HOMES

- By ELLIOT JESSETT

Full skips during the lengthy clean-up

“IT was like living in Beirut!” says Linda Crilly, 70, as she tries to describe the aftermath of the Bulwer Street flood last year.

Like so many other residents, Linda’s home was flooded with dirty water after a prolonged period of heavy rain and a ‘software fault’ in a United Utilities sewer system.

Emergency services were called to Bulwer Street in Bootle on September 30 last year after water started gushing into people’s homes, with many requiring rescue boats to get out safely.

It was the second major flooding incident reported on the road in the last 14 years and left dozens of residents effectively homeless. Their living spaces became submerged in dirty water, ruining household items such as TVs and sofas as well as personal mementos and family heirlooms.

Linda was at a celebration in Southport when she got a phone call off her husband to say water was coming in through the back of the house again.

Linda said ‘again’ because she and her husband were also residents of Bulwer Street when it was flooded back in 2013.

Because of that experience, Linda decided they were going to stay in the house during the cleanup process, having moved out into temporary accommodation the last time.

But when she considers everything they went through, she is still conflicted about whether it was the right thing to do.

Linda describes the immediate aftermath of last year’s flood: “It was like living in Beirut! That was the way I described it at the time. It looked like it was.

“My husband and myself had already made the decision that we weren't going to leave the house, because when I think, when you're not there, you can get forgotten about.

“They had to dig up the living room floor so we had to go missing for a full day while they dug this up, and then they laid a new floor, but they used Tarmac. The whole house smelled like a road!”