'Terrifying city floods forced us out of our home'

A COUPLE have described the “terrifying” moment water gushed into their home during the torrential downpours in Plymouth this week.

- By SHANNON BROWN

On Thursday night the long bout of summer sunshine came to a hard and abrupt end with heavy rainfall and widespread flooding across the city.

Matt and Maddy, who live in Stoke, were heading to bed at around 12.30am on Friday, August 29 when they noticed thunder and lightning in the air. Maddy recalls telling her partner: “You know, its funny. I've lived in England over 10 years and I still get scared when I see thunder and lightning and worry about tornados.”

While Matt went to bed, Maddy said her intuition told her to check the front door and was shocked to see huge amounts of rain pouring in. “I told myself it was fine and my partner would have locked up but the voice said “do it anyway” and I went,” she said.

“I could see rain pouring down, like it does in North America, and opened the door to see out. I then noticed a few inches of water had collected, and so pulled out my phone to film for my landlord.”

Assuming the drain was clogged, Maddy went to change into shorts and socks to unblock it but noticed that their neighbour's enclosed front garden had started to fill with water.

“As I started filming, it reached the wall and began cascading into our garden like a waterfall. I filmed it for evidence while calling out to my partner to come “now now now” as I slammed the door. The cloakroom flooded within seconds regardless.”

Maddy said: “We then shut our inner front door and tried gathering towels and clothes to try and stop the water as best we could. Before we could even grab anything, we heard a slam as our outer front door was broken open by the force of the water, and within seconds we heard the inner door creaking under the weight of the water flooding into our cloakroom.