I learn a lot about sandbags

Like much of the country, we found ourselves in the midst of a flood emergency this week.

We had some very worrying hours as we sandbagged the house and watched the water rise. We were among the lucky ones – we escaped major damage. Many others fared far worse…

As a reporter, I covered my fair share of floods… but this time I was on the other side… and that taught me a few things.

The first thing I learned is that filling sand bags is very hard work.

The emergency services arrived with a load of sandbags on Wednesday morning – about the time most of the people in our street were coming to the realisation that for the first time anyone could remember, we were in danger of being flooded.

The problem is, a truck load of sandbags doesn’t go very far when you have a street full of worried people – and a lot of water. People brought wheelbarrows and wheelie bins to collect the sandbags.

We did try to fend for ourselves. I went looking for suitable sandbags at a local garden centre. This had two disadvantages … it was going to cost a lot of money to buy enough of them to be useful. And by the time I had brought the first car load back, I could no longer drive to the house.

Which lead to another discovery. Sandbags are heavy. Particularly when they are wet, and you have to carry them through freezing knee deep water to get to your house – which was still sitting high and dry – well, when I say high .. I mean a few inches above the rising water.

The council and army delivered some more sandbags – but they were having trouble keeping up with demand. That’s when they decided we could try the do-it-yourself option. They deposited a huge pile of sand in a dry spot on the road – along with a huge bunch of empty bags.

Sandbags are designed to be long and thin for maximum efficiency – but it’s hard to fill a sandbag that is only an inch or two wider than your shovel. It’s also hard to tie the tops properly when your gloves are wet and your hands are frozen.

And… the sand gets everywhere!

It was wonderful to see the community spirit that developed as that pile of sand was very quickly turned into flood barriers. People were filling bags for others, carrying bags for other… even helping place the bags around other people’s homes.

Maybe this created the good karma that eventually stopped the rising waters before we were inundated.

Another lesson I took from this experience was that watching flood waters creep towards your house is surprisingly boring. Seriously. Once the sand bags are in place, and the books and CDs from the bottom shelf have been moved upstairs; the TV is unplugged and the cat is safely inside… watching the water is tedious. Is it rising? Maybe it’s falling – or is that just wishful thinking?

And at this point – may I wish a lifetime of bad weather on the sightsee-ers – mostly in huge 4-wheel-drive vehicles who seemed to find it necessary to drive down our flooded street, usually at high speed – kicking up waves to add to the damage being caused. One was filming our flooding on his phone, held with one hand as he swept down our street, kicking up a wake behind that washed more water into people’s homes and gardens. You, Sir, are a thoughtless idiot!

By contrast, the emergency services, army and police were wonderful. They were struggling to cope with the size of the disaster across a huge part of the country, but they did their best and were unfailingly helpful and polite. Thanks folks.

So… in the future, if you find yourself reading a book of mine which places the characters at the centre of a flood – you’ll know where the idea came from. And if hail falls on our heroine as she fills sandbags while shivering in her wellies– it will be because that’s what happened to me.

As a writer, I really do believe no experience is ever wasted… but really, I would have been happy to do without this one.