The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Five years on, Alyth still feels the impact of devastating flooding
Town community group working to protect the area
Five years on from Alyth’s biggest flood in living memory, its impact lives on.
And for some the images of cars piling up on the town’s busiest street, residents fleeing their homes, businesses forced to close, shattered bridges, widespread power cuts, fear and panic of July 17 2015 still feel like yesterday.
On February 15 this year, as Storm Dennis unleashed its fury on the area, the water level reached the road and lapped against at least two of the four footbridges rebuilt after the 2015 flood. Perth and Kinross Council acted swiftly, deploying sand bags and installing makeshift flood barriers.
A new organisation, Alyth Community Support Group, is working with the Scottish Flood Forum (SFF) to develop a community flood plan to help protect the town in future. The SFF is also setting up a River Track flood alerting project for Alyth to provide valuable warning time should the river again show signs of bursting its banks.
Locals said the 2015 incident brought out the very best in the community.
American Russell Taylor, 64, was on the second day of a two-month holiday in Scotland when the flooding happened.
Russell, then a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, had been staying in Leighton Square with her husband Steve.
She said: “The morning after the day we arrived Steve went outside and came back, ashen-faced, saying ‘it’s bad, it’s bad’. I was in the kitchen trying to get the kettle working with no electricity.
“We were soon to see how this town pulled together.”
The couple completed their move to Perthshire in early 2018 and Russell is now the secretary of Alyth Development Trust.
Jinty Young, 76, had been working on a farm in the Jordanstone area and was driving back to her home in Springbank on the morning of July 17 when she was caught up in a torrent of water that poured out of Alyth Burn and on to the road.
Jinty was somehow able to wedge her vehicle behind two cars that shielded her from water flows to the front but was unable to leave for fear of being pushed out into the raging current.
She said: “My neighbour phoned a friend who lived above one of the shops nearby.
“He came down and told me to roll down my window. He said ‘I am not going to leave you’. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.”
After more than 30 minutes in the car Jinty was rescued when farmer John Ferguson parked his tractor to the rear and two firemen, who had been in the front bucket, helped her out.
Jinty said: “As soon as John took the tractor away the car went flying down into the park.”
While orthodox flood defences for Alyth appear to be off the table, the River Track scheme is being launched and this could provide some early warning to residents.
The town has been selected as a candidate site for the community flood alerting project that is being funded by the SFF, a charity financially backed by the Scottish Government.
Already there is a flood sensor in the town centre and the project will involve the installation of a second sensor upstream, in the Den of Alyth area. These will be linked with another five alert display receivers placed with suitable householders or in community locations.
Paul Laidlaw, community resilience manager for SFF, has worked closely with local people, including the community support group, and has noticed a shift in attitudes since the coronavirus pandemic.
He said: “Communities are starting to see Covid as just one of the risks and are now looking at what other risks they face.
“In Alyth there is a palpable anxiety about flooding and there is a greater appetite to do something about it now than there was before the pandemic.”