Businesses count £100,000 cost of devastating floods
Flood-hit businesses in Oban are facing damages and losses surging towards £100,000.
The equipment yard at Hire & Supplies in Mill Lane was turned into ‘a raging sea’, said its manager Mary-Ann Murray. The force of water was so strong it lifted a 900-litre diesel tank, wrecked at least 12 machines and destroyed warehouse stock.
Ruined display plinths, wooden floors and walls containing glass-wool will also have to be ripped out and rebuilt, which means more trade will be lost while the work is carried out. So far losses stand at about £45,000 but the final cost will be higher, Ms Murray said. ‘It was like something out of a biblical movie. It just kept coming at us, coming through the walls and outside it was shooting up through a drain cover like a geyser.
‘No one from Argyll and Bute Council has been to see us. We rent our yard from the council but we’ve not heard a word from them. We were under water for 48 hours and cordoned off for three days.
‘There needs to be a meeting of affected businesses with top people at the council. First, they need to dredge the Black Lynn. There’s a fair chance that we businesses won’t get insurance again – they’ll avoid us like the plague. We will be considered a flood risk unless something is done.
‘I’m not surprised to hear it’s about £100,000 worth of damage and losses. There’s got to be measures to stop future flooding otherwise the knockon effect is you won’t have businesses in Oban. No one wants to lose stock,’ she added.
Another business owner, who asked to stay anonymous, said the floods landed him with a repair bill of £20,000, plus three days of lost earnings. He now plans to seek compensation from the council, accusing it of negligence.
‘A council employee admitted the pumps failed through lack of maintenance. The road was closed off. How can you run businesses when you have a closed road?’ he said. An Argyll and Bute Council spokesperson said: ‘It’s incorrect to say a lack of maintenance was to blame. Rapidly rising waters affected the control cabinet, compromising the pumps which had been working correctly up until the morning of October 9. The panel is being repaired and plans put in place to protect it from future flooding on this scale.’
Lessons learned from the floods will be included as part of an Oban Flood Study consultation launched this year.
Trail West caravan and trailer centre is also counting the cost. Boss Andrew Macdonald said: ‘It’s difficult to quantify the loss but the biggest, immediate cost to us is through lost sales. I know of one customer who made a big purchase from someone else. I also heard there was a known, pre-existing fault on the pumps. I’m not normally one for council bashing but it’s disappointing if all this could have been avoided.’
Oban flood victim Hugh Carmichael has blasted environmental agency SEPA for caring more about wildlife than human life.
Mr Carmichael, who is waiting for insurance assessors to give their verdict after his home in Soroba Road opposite the Black Lynn was flooded, claims the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) could ‘block’ action to get the waterway dredged.
Nine inches of water covered his house and in some places was higher than plug sockets – which he says could have proved fatal.
‘The council has told me they can’t clean the burn because it will interfere with the wildlife. Apparently SEPA will not give the council a licence to do it. SEPA could block everything.
‘Our lives are under threat. They care more about the wildlife than preserving humans.
‘We could’ve been electrocuted and killed if it wasn’t for sheer luck that I was up watching the flood water rise. If we’d been in bed and I or my wife had come down in the middle of the night and put bare feet in that water above the plug sockets, we could have died.’
Mr Carmichael said the recent floods made it the sixth time his home had been flooded and said the narrowest part of the burn running close to his property had not been cleared out for two decades.
‘SEPA need to come and eyeball it for themselves to see how bad the burn is near the house. It’s far too narrow, and there are even trees growing in it.’
An Argyll and Bute Council spokesperson said: ‘We will continue to work with partners to do all we can to alleviate the risk of flooding.’
A spokesperson for the SEPA said if dredging was required, which might change the profile of the watercourse, then authorisation may be needed.
But she added: ‘SEPA has no record of any application being submitted for the removal of knotweed or dredging in the Black Lynn.’
Mr Carmichael is also worried about the safety of people using the path at the back of his house when the Black Lynn floods.
Oban councillors Roddy McCuish and Jim Lynch met Mr Carmichael and other worried residents living in Mill Park and Burnside Terrace on Friday.
Councillor McCuish said: ‘They are telling me the burn has not been cleared out for a great many years. Flooding will only get worse if nothing is done now. We will have to find a way.
‘We will ask for funding from the Oban Common Good fund and also ask for money from the town’s excess parking revenue seeing as Lochavullin car park was affected. The burn needs to be dredged quickly and then we need to look at what can be done in the long-term.’