Bride-to-be Sophie Watters was inconsolable when she saw pictures of Carlisle United’s submerged stadium on television – and not only because she’s a huge fan of the club.
Watters, 28, and her fiancé Richard Cakans, 38, were due to have their wedding reception at Brunton Park this Saturday. But those plans now lie in ruins thanks to Storm Desmond.
Speaking as teams of volunteers helped clear debris from the devastated stadium on Wednesday, Watters said she was “gutted, devastated” that her big day had been ruined. “It was perfect. I’d planned it in four weeks so I could get back to my business and then this happens,” she said.
Watters and her fiancé still plan to marry on Saturday, although a replacement reception venue has been near impossible to find, with most places either hit by power cuts or already booked for Christmas parties.
In spite of it all, she said, the club had been great. “I’m here to help them because they’ve helped us,” Watters said, donning heavy duty gloves to help lift sodden objects from the stadium.
“I woke up on Sunday morning and my fiancé’s sister texted him to say it [the stadium] was under water,” she said. “Everything’s up the wall at the minute. We don’t have a clue what’s going to happen. Obviously the wedding is still going to go ahead but we’re still unsure about the venue.”
Dozens of volunteers helped club staff shift debris including televisions, washing machines, benches, tables and gym equipment as the full scale of the devastation inside the stadium became clear.
The club’s medical room lay in tatters when journalists were shown the ruin on Wednesday morning. In Carlisle’s home dressing room, sodden football kit was strewn across the muddy floor.
In the stadium tunnel, whose walls were lined by an 8ft high silt mark, the pitch was still under standing flood water.
The volunteers were responding to a callout for help posted on Carlisle United’s Twitter account on Tuesday evening, hours after 15 of the club’s players took to the streets around the stadium to help clear houses in one of the worst-hit parts of the county. Large parts of Warwick Road, Carlisle’s main artery where the stadium is based, was under 8ft of water until late on Monday.
Lynne Carruthers, 53, a lifelong Carlisle fan, said she was motivated to help because she personally had escaped the worst of Storm Desmond. “I’m just here to support the Carlisle community, it’s a tragedy for the county. I couldn’t believe it had happened again. Just horrendous,” she said. “It’s not a very well-off club and I’ve been very lucky, that’s why I feel I need to do something.”
Lee Fearn, 30, the club’s fitness and conditioning coach, was heaving ruined equipment out of the stadium gym on Wednesday morning with the help of about 30 volunteers.
The state of the stadium was “much worse” than he had expected, he said. “Pretty much everything from the gym is destroyed,” he said. “The last time it happened up here you see the pictures on television and newspapers but they disappear after a week or so.
“Maybe naively you see the water disappear and you don’t really think anything more of it, but you can just see the magnitude of the operation that’s going to have to take place now. It’s going to take months and months to repair.”
Fearn, who joined Carlisle two seasons ago, also felt the pain of the floods at home, when the house he shares with his girlfriend near the stadium was swamped.
He was getting updates on the situation at home throughout Saturday but it was only on returning to Cumbria from Sunday’s FA Cup win at Welling that the scale of the floods hit home.
“We’re just the same as everyone else in the area, everything’s ruined. It’s heartbreaking to see but there are families that are a lot worse off – families with young kids, coming up to Christmas, it’s the worst time of the year,” he said.
Fearn said he hoped the crisis would spur the club on this season like it did in 2005, when Carlisle were promoted out of the non-league conference in spite of a flood-hit year. They currently sit sixth in League Two, seven points behind the leaders.
“It’s been heartbreaking but at the same time we’ve found a bit of solidarity. If we can take that onto the pitch it might even, in a perverse way, benefit us,” he said.
Heavy rain is forecast to return to Cumbria later with up to 12 hours of rainfall and further flooding possible. The Environment Agency said up to 58mm (2.3in) of rain could fall on Wednesday evening into Thursday, potentially hampering the recovery of the areas worst hit at the weekend.
However, any flooding would not be of the same magnitude as that caused by Storm Desmond, which saw thousands of people evacuated from their homes and many more without power for days.
