Ewyas Harold community continuing flood recovery following Storm Claudia
The Herefordshire village was flooded when heavy rainfall hit the area during Storm Claudia towards the end of last week
The community in Herefordshire's Ewyas Harold is continuing to recover after the village was flooded following the passing of Storm Claudia.
Heavy rainfall led to the Dulas Brook which runs through it recording levels at over 2.9 metres last Friday and bursting its banks.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency confirmed that the "significant rainfall" had resulted in "the highest ever levels being experienced at Ewyas Harold since the gauge was installed", its previous highest being 2.55 metres at a measuring station last November.
It also added: "The Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures that we have installed in communities in Herefordshire have helped to reduce impacts and we are now looking at funding opportunities to deliver such measures at Ewyas Harold.”
Stock losses are "significant"
Bennie Krige is the owner of the Village Store and Post Office which re-opened its doors yesterday, he said the flooding has had a real impact.
"We had 800 millimetres of water inside the shop, it was over a metre outside, it breached our flood defences and we've had it in our residential property," he said.
"The stock losses are significant, everything under 800 millimetres has had to be thrown out and that has had a significant financial impact as we've also been closed for 3 days."
He also thanked the community for their support in tidying and getting things up and running again.
He said: "On Saturday morning we had over 40 volunteers, just everyone with a mop, bucket, just wanting to help.
"Without them we wouldn't have got this far, our staff have been amazing putting in 12/14 hour shifts and it’s important to open the shop as people rely on us for their day-to-day essentials.
"Our stock levels are obviously significantly lower than we'd like it, we had our first deliveries in on Tuesday with more coming, so we should be sort of back up and running fully by the weekend."
"We've been flooded before, but not to this level"
Marcus Lloyd runs The Old Stables Fish and Chips Shop which is based next to the Dulas Brook and has been there for over 20 years.
He said they did suffer some flooding but have re-opened and on the Saturday were able to feed all the volunteers who were helping out for free to keep them going.
"We've been flooded before, but not to this level, nowhere near," he said.
"This is by far a lot worse than we've ever been affected before.
"We’ve probably got about a two-and-a-half foot flood defence across the front door which really saved us, but it was very close, another two inches and it would have been over the top."
Mr Lloyd also mentioned how he had carried out work last year to protect the shop and keep it safe for if it did flood again.
"So we had it rewired, so we've got all the sockets set very high and then we put these flood defences in which are probably not big enough now so we might have to make them a bit bigger just in case again," he said.
"We had a new frying range put in there last year so that's £30,000 plus, we've got ice cream machines which are about £6,500 days each. and there's all the fridges, so it would have been devastating (if more water had got in)."
Another impacted was R.J and R.B Mailes Butchers which managed to re-open on Monday on a restricted service.
Partner in the business Richard Mailes also thanked the community for their help with cleaning up and said they were still assessing some of the potential damage.
"We closed Saturday, we had Sunday as a clear up and on Monday we did open, but it was all restricted because the loss of some of the cabinets until they actually dry out, we don't know whether they're actually working or not," he said.
"You've got to let them dry out and then let the engineer sort of get into it and sort it out and obviously you lose the stock that's in the freezers as well.
"The freezers were floating, that’s how bad it was in there."
The Environment Agency's West Midlands team said it would keep monitoring river levels in the region following Storm Claudia.