A mother-of-one from Shropshire has said “we can’t continue like this” after her home flooded for the third time in the past year amid problems across the country on Thursday.
Siobhan Connor, a public relations consultant from Shrewsbury, said her home was full of contaminated water, with “raw sewage” coming up from the drains.
She said it had been their 20th flood in total since moving into their property in 1997, with three floods in 2023/24 alone after the banks of the River Severn, which surrounds the town in a loop, burst in recent days after heavy rainfall.
A major incident has been declared amid widespread flooding in Nottinghamshire just days after disruption caused by strong winds and rain from Storm Henk.
The storm has left the ground saturated and more prone to flooding, forecasters warned.
“We had to turn the electrics off so we can’t turn the heating on and when you’ve got the coldness of the flood water in your home, on the ground floor, the house feels icy,” Ms Connor told the PA news agency.
“There’s a lot of people (in this situation) and it’s making us ill – the physical and mental stress, the loss of work.
“We can’t continue like this.
“We’re still completely surrounded by water.”
Ms Connor said there is sewage in the flood water which has entered her home. She said: “Nothing is going down so we haven’t showered because we can’t.
“There’s no water going down. There’s stuff floating. There’s stuff backing up that’s not ours.
“It’s a case of using a bucket.
“You have bits of raw sewage floating – I’ve just seen some now.
“It feels like living in the Dark Ages.”
She added that her 16-year-old son, Oscar Connor, is due to go back to school on Friday, saying they would “have to walk”.
She said the town had been on flood alert since Christmas with the flood water rising drastically from Wednesday.
“I was really surprised on Wednesday morning, I woke up at about 3am in the morning and I was a bit panicky because I could hear our pump clicking,” she said.
“I looked out the window and the water was up to our gate.”
Ms Connor said that she has carried out several flood prevention measures in her property over the years, such as installing a water pump, moving white goods and electrical appliances above waist height and having flood barriers which she can place against their doors.
“It’s a really horrendous feeling,” she said.
“We’re getting like three floods a year now and it’s absolutely ridiculous.
“Each year we do things a bit quicker, like putting up our barriers, because we’re really well-versed because we rehearse it a lot.”
She added that she will see mould appear in her property because “the building hasn’t recovered”.
“We’re also not recovering because it’s becoming so frequent now,” she said.
“People are just feeling completely abandoned and they cannot continue like this.”
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