DANGER TO LIFE
6,500 flee town as dam is set to burst after floods
POLICE faced a race against time last night to evacuate an entire town amid fears it will be engulfed by a reservoir bursting its banks.
Officers went from door to door telling about 6,500 residents to leave immediately after a hole appeared in the 150-year-old dam wall of Toddbrook Reservoir.
If it breaks it will unleash 300 million gallons of water – swollen by intense rainfall – on to Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire.
Resident Grace Cole, 28, said if the wall collapses it “will probably wipe half the town off the map”.
Chris Gay, the commodore of Toddbrook Sailing Club which uses the reservoir, said yesterday: “If you were there last night, it was just like Niagara Falls. That’s obviously eroded the earth from behind the concrete slabs. The water level is still high and therefore probably – I’m no expert in this – but erosion is still taking place.”
Councillor Martin Thomas, chairman of Whaley Bridge Town Council, said: “There are some communities and a school which are immediately beneath the dam wall. Something we previously looked at as a benign leisure facilWater gushes over the crumbling dam wall after heavy rainfall led to the lake behind it overflowing its banks
ity suddenly becomes a real mortal danger.” Police warned residents that they may not be able to return home for “a number of days”.
The Environment Agency has issued a severe flood warning – meaning danger to life – for the River Goyt atWhaley Bridge.
Derbyshire Police said the decision to evacuate was taken because this is “an unprecedented, fastmoving, emergency situation”. It
took place with a severe weather warning of heavy rain and thunderstorms right over the area, threatening a region from Warrington to the Peak District and Stoke-onTrent to Preston.
Engineering expert Dr Mohammed Heidarzadeh, an assistant professor at Brunel University London, said the dam is an embankment which is vulnerable to be swept away because its spillway, designed to stop the reservoir overflowing, is broken.
He said: “Embankment dams are made from soil and so can be washed away rapidly. Due to heavy rainfall, the spillway is now broken and a big chunk of its concrete structure is damaged.
“There is a possibility that the spillway could then become fully broken in a few hours. If the spillway is fully gone, the embankment dam will be washed away very rapidly which could cause a massive flood.”
Anna Aspinall, 36, from the town, said she and others wanted to help by placing sandbags in the area but were sent away when structural engineers advised “that the wall is at high risk of failing”.
She said: “We have had significant rainfall over the past few days resulting in the overflow of the