Second disaster in only 23 days for trader
BUSINESSMAN Ross Cunningham is counting the cost after flooding damaged his Wigtownshire shop – less than a month after a Lake District store he also owns was hit by a similar deluge.
His family has run Stewart R Cunningham’s outdoor activities business since it was set up by his father 47 years ago. They have six stores in the UK.
Early last month he was forced to evacuate his store in Grasmere, Cumbria, when a river burst its banks. His shop in Newton Stewart was flooded in this week’s storms.
Mr Cunningham, 39, of Kendal, Cumbria, said: ‘We lost another store 23 days ago exactly. Then on Wednesday afternoon the manager here phoned me up and said it had started flooding in Newton Stewart.
‘Right away we packed the car with everything we needed and came up here. We arrived about 4.30 in the afternoon to find the street as a river. The water was probably a good 2ft high. I think it had been higher but it seemed to have gone down a bit by the time we arrived.
‘Because it’s tidal here it was moving along quite a lot. It’s just the damage that it leaves behind, the mess and the misery and everything else.
‘We’re determined to get back up and into business as soon as possible.
‘I’d urge everyone to support their local retailers to help them get through a difficult situation like this.’
Mr Cunningham added: ‘We’ve lost two stores now. Hopefully the other one will open up again in the next ten days but it’s not yet ready to go in.
‘This one might be a bit longer, but luckily we’ve got the advantage of putting a little pop-up store around the back.
‘We’re fortunate that we’ve only lost about 10 per cent of stock.’