![]() "Suddenly we got an urgent call from the coastguard telling us to go to a house down the road to rescue a man having a heart attack. The winchman, Sergeant Mario Testa, was sent down to rescue a woman with a broken thumb who was trapped in her house in the main street. "When we arrived there was lightning and heavy rain which made the rescue bid very hazardous," he said. Within five minutes Flight Lieutenant John Evans and his crew were on their way to the scene. We put a board across the door to stop the water coming in and we climbed over it and formed a human chain to get out of the water and over to the other side."Īs emergency calls began to come in, the first rescue helicopter, from RAF Chivenor in north Devon, was scrambled at 4.10pm. The flood water was rising so quickly we realised we had to get out. "Everyone started to scream, because it was black outside and the electricity had gone down. Then we just watched the water go higher and higher against the glass. "We shut the door of the shop trying to stop the water getting in, thinking it was a small flood. "We didn't really notice it at first because it had been raining for a while," she said. Where the Valency meets the Jordan by the harbour, Di Johnson was working in the Rocky Road art gallery, selling African art and jewellery, when the sky turned black. Unfortunately for Boscastle, the Valency very much belongs in the latter category. Some rivers react sluggishly to sudden downpours, while others, especially those with a short catchment area, are known as "spaty". ![]() Ms Giudetti had been enjoying the sunshine 16 miles away in Launceston when she heard about the storm hitting Boscastle.īoscastle stands in a deep coomb where two valleys meet, formed by the rivers Valency and Jordan, while a third river, Paradise, also flows through the village. Mrs Littleford swept for more than an hour as her granddaughter, Mia Giudetti, desperately tried to get back to the house to help her. Instead it was rain of a biblical intensity, cascading off roofs and bouncing high off the pavements so that umbrellas offered little protection. It had been raining for more than an hour but it was not the normal mid-summer storm that regularly sends tourists, clutching their pasties and ice creams, scurrying for cover in this part of the north Cornish coast. The first hint that something was going seriously wrong in Boscastle came just before 2pm, when the cast iron manhole covers in the street began to gently twitch from the force of the water underneath. "I went to the front door and it was like a fountain coming off the steps." So she grabbed a wooden broom and started frantically trying to protect herself and her property from the turbulent brown water racing down the Cornish hillside.
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