British Neighbors Cope With Floodwaters
The worst flooding in 20 years has Britons coping as best they know how.
July 25, 2007 — -- When the water came rushing down her street Saturday night, 77-year-old Nora Bland was terrified.
"It was a very harrowing experience," said Bland, as she stood on the doorstep of the modest bungalow where she lives alone with her Yorkshire terrier, dirty brown water still lapping at her driveway.
"Your stomach's all butterflies," she said. "Like, is the water going to come, or isn't it?"
So far, it hasn't reached Bland's doorstep. But the flood that swept through her neighborhood and submerged the small cul-de-sac on which she lives has kept Bland shut in her house for days.
Unable to wade through the thigh-deep, sewage-polluted water that surrounds her home, Bland and several other elderly residents on the same street have depended on friendly neighbors for food, water and information.
"We've just been going every couple of hours," said Shelley Roffey, 29, a sprightly blond woman who lives in a brown-brick house around the corner.
"We deliver their post," Roffey told ABC News. "And I've been showing them pictures on my phone of what it's like outside. They have no clue."
Such signs of kindness, along with a kind of determined resignation, characterize the attitude of people in this corner of the city of Gloucester, one of the areas hardest hit by the devastating floods that swept through southwest England in the past five days.
"I think people have kind of accepted it," said Terry Williams, 70, wearing knee-high rubber boots and green waterproof pants as he waded toward the entrance of his bungalow, which stood barely above the flood levels.
"You know, life goes on," he said. "What can you do about it?"
Rising waters have left 350,000 people in the county of Gloucestershire without running water, according to authorities, and 48,000 homes were plunged into darkness when a local power station failed over the weekend. More than 10,000 homes throughout England have either been flooded or are at risk of flooding, the BBC reported Tuesday.
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