Christmas 2015 saw York’s river Ouse peaking at 5.2 metres high, flooding York and worst of all York City Centre. But was is life like now, one year on, for the residents and businesses who were affected by the gushing water?
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The floods of December 2015 came only 3 short years after a previous flood disaster in 2012, however these floods were the worst in a generation for York. With the height of the River Ouse’s water peaked around 5.2 metres, the damage was not confined to a small area around the river. About 500 homes alongisde the Ouse, the Foss, Osbaldwick Beck, Tang Hall Beck and Walmgate were just a few of the streets that were significantly damaged with over 250 people having to be evacuated from their homes.
Almost 1 year after the floods hit the city, may residents and businesses are still feeling the effects of the events that happened. For small businesses down Walmgate and Fossgate the floods will have damaged thousands of pounds worth of stock and the cost of replacing it all even greater.
The team at ‘Shhhh Hair & Beauty’ were affected massively by the floods with the salon being completely damaged with not much able to be saved. The owner and staff of the salon were happy to share their experience and sent me their story.
“It was one of the worst days of my life when I heard that the salon had been badly flooded. We managed to get into the salon the day after it happened to see the damage and it was just awful. There was just water everywhere and everything was drenched and filthy. There wasnt that much we could recover to be honest. With us being a beauty salon, most of the equipment we use is electrical based and all of it was just ruined from the water.”
” A few days in to January we had a sudden hit of realistion of how much damage there was. This business was my entire life and to see it back to bare with a mass amount of water damage was just heart. We had temporary wooden floors placed and any cheap seats we could find to place in front of the mirrors to try and keep the hair section of the business going.”
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“Thankfully with all of the support we had we were able to keep going but at a much slower pace. We were struggling to purchase new equipment to get the salon back to normal. Customers became less frequent because we couldnt keep up with the latest standards and equipment as we just simply couldnt afford it. We did have threats of having to close the business at around February/ March time as more money was going out to coming in.”
“My business was my life and the thought of having to close it down was a thousand times worse than seeing the salon bare with damage. Another month passed by and it became clear that it would have to be by some miracle for us to get just one part of the salon back to the standards it was before. But slowly things started to pick up again and we could see a small improvement starting. I was finally able to order some new salon chairs and styling equipment and start to think about possibly re-decorating the floors and walls.”
“It had been a very stressful 6 months will so many ups and downs but I am so happy that we were able to celebrate the re-opening of ‘Shhhh Hair & Beauty’ in June of 2016 with a gorgeous new look and some of the best equipment you can buy.”
It had definitely been a very difficult time for the team and the salon since the floods till their new look emerged but I was interested to find out whether it is really all worth if considering there are possibilities that floods can easily hit again and what they have changed now from before.
“The issues with floods is that you can’t pin point of and when they are going to happen. We can’t just sit and wait for the next one as that would put everything on hold, instead you get on with life and just have to think a little more logically about you handle things. For us, we now pack away all electrical equipment at the end of the day and place it at a higher level so if anything does happen we can try and keep the damage to a minimum. We know that the river is there and that there is water flowing through the city, but you have to trust that everything is being done by your council to protect us as much as they can.”
Hannah Shaw, the manager of accommodation Student Castle, also shared her experience of what happened during that December month and the best way she thinks you can prepare for flooding.
“We were very lucky that we werent hit too bad here and it was just our front building that recieved a little bit of water damage. We knew floods had hit before but we thought defenses had improved from previous years. Im not sure there is much you can do in order to protect or prepare yourself and your homes/ buildings from floods but except know that they are a possible risk and try to rely on your comminuty to do all that they can to prevent deep floods.”
“I think the most difficult period of floods is definetely trying to keep positive with the devistation that can be left behind afterwards. For some people there can only be little damage and it is easy to get your life back together and on track, but for others almost everything can be flushed away and they are left having to find a way to rebuild their lives. At the other end of Walmgate the damage was much worse.”
It is clear that things are pretty much back to normal now for people in York but they also seem to rely on York’s flood defences, trusting they have been massively improved one year on.