Flood victims ‘could be locked down in caravans and hotels’
FLOOD VICTIMS in East Yorkshire could spend weeks in lockdown in caravans and hotel rooms as coronavirus delays their return home.
About 100 properties in Snaith and East Cowick were inundated after the River Aire burst its banks and spilled out of its normal washlands at the end of February.
And families who were forced out by flooding could now face an even longer wait before they can repair their properties.
But the Rev Eleanor Robertshaw, the vicar in Snaith, said the community spirit, which saw volunteers putting together food donations and filling sandbags, was continuing during the coronavirus outbreak.
The Rev Robertshaw said she did not know how people who were living in hotels would manage now that restaurants had closed.
She said: “I know someone
RECTOR ELEANOR ROBERTSHAW: who is in a caravan with three children. Obviously, they can get out in the garden but it must be so hard. What else can be thrown at the place? It just seems so hard to have to deal with two things on the trot, really.”
Businesses, which had been closed for weeks because of the flooding, would suffer even more than those elsewhere.
But she said the flooding had given the community an advantage as they were already prepared to help those in need.
She added: “While, obviously, we wouldn’t have wanted the flooding to happen, it gave us an advantage to be ready for this as we already had things in place to help people in that sense. It made us a more coherent place to be.”