Two years today since the Cockermouth floods.

Two years ago I posted this little video on my blog.

It was the view out of one of our bedroom windows on the afternoon that the river broke its banks and the floods began. The river continued to rise for about another nine hours until the water reached nearly up to the roof of the garden shelter you can see on the left hand side. The whole of the garden disappeared under the water and the lane was filled. We were incredibly lucky in that our house itself is high enough up not to be flooded. Only about a dozen other houses alongside the two rivers were as lucky as us. The Main Street became a river that travelled so fast that things, that were washed away by the water, were travelling at over the 30mph speed limit.

This week there has been a lot of chatting and reminiscing about things that happened on this day two years ago. There are funny stories, sad stories, expressions of anxiety about it happening again and many ideas on how to prevent it. Various flood alleviation schemes are being discussed and legal issues are being pursued. There has even been a deputation sent to No 10.

A lot of our time has been spent dealing with the problem that we were left with in that our river wall was washed away thereby removing the only vehicular access to our house. We have a six inch high pile of paperwork and several hundred emails just dealing with that. The number of agencies that have to be consulted before putting back , what was there before, is unbelievable and that is only after the insurance have accepted the claim.

So what little pearls of wisdom can I pass on that could be useful to others------apart from living in a great community like this?

First of all most of us can take digital pictures so do it! Go round your house and photograph each room from four sides as a record of what is there. Take closeups of anything of value.
Take pictures of all the outside of your house and garden and of the contents of the inside of sheds and garages.
Scan and save info of purchases and guarantees. Same applies to solicitor,mortgage company, insurance companies,banks ,gas, electricity and phone.
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Now put all that info somewhere away from the house where it will be easily accessed in any emergency whether you are at home or away. You could put it on a CD and leave with your kids or email it to yourself at a web based email address like gmail.

Keep as much essential paperwork together if possible.

The last thing I can think of at the moment is to scan and save all those family photographs. The number of people that we have talked to who have said that the one thing they really missed and could never replace was all the photographs, was really sad.