Friday dawned early for the residents of Whaley Bridge. Their 5am alarm clock was a Chinook helicopter hovering overhead, laden with huge plastic bags of aggregate to drop on the damaged dam that threatened the Derbyshire town’s existence.
“It was like Good Morning, Vietnam,” said Edwina Currie, the former Conservative MP who has lived in Whaley Bridge, population 6,500, since 2012. On Friday morning and despite a poor night’s sleep she was resplendent in jazzy leggings, fur-lined Hunter wellies and a bright blue bum bag, trying to get a look at what was going on at Toddbrook reservoir.
Every five minutes a helicopter arrived, lowering carefully to almost ground level to shore up the dam which was so damaged that police warned there was still a “substantial threat to life” were it to fail.
About 1,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the Derbyshire town on Thursday after a month and a half’s rain fell on the hills above in the previous 48 hours, threatening the structural integrity of the reservoir wall.
On Friday, with conditions still severe but easing and police warning of an “unprecedented, fast-moving, emergency situation”, the residents were taking stock. Among them was Jade Judge, who, along with her husband Jan and their daughters Skye, 19 months, and Storm, seven months, had ended up in her brother’s one-bed flat up the road in New Mills. “I never thought I would say in my lifetime: ‘I am an evacuee,’” she said. “But here we are.”
On Thursday afternoon, Jade was having a typically exhausting day at home with her young children. She had no idea of the drama unfolding a few minutes’ walk away until Jan rang her in a panic.
She grabbed the babies and took them to higher ground: the top of Whaley Lane, a steep road out of the town where her in-laws live. As soon as Jan arrived, they went back to fetch sterilisers for the babies’ bottles and a few other essentials, ignoring the police officers who ordered them to retreat. “I told them that they were not going to stop me getting things for my babies and we went back in,” said Jade.
Further up the high street at 6pm on Thursday, Dan Curley was also arguing with police. He runs the Cock pub on Buxton Road and was reluctant to leave. “It’s a brewery pub but I have a lot of my own stuff in there, electric equipment and things, and I didn’t want to go. Then they told us if we didn’t leave they’d arrest us so I thought I better had.” He returned a few hours later, begging to be let through the cordon to fetch his glasses and was told in no uncertain terms that it would not be possible. On Friday lunchtime he was still half-blind with a crushing headache caused by hours of squinting.
Meanwhile, just 10 metres away from Toddbrook reservoir, at the far end of Reservoir Road, John and Helen Derham were entertaining friends with an aperitif in their front garden. No one in Whaley lives closer to the water than the retired couple, but no one had ordered them out, so they decided to stay put. Their road was shut, so their guests had to arrive cross country, over a stile and through a muddy wood, in order to check on the couple. They were in high spirits, despite Helen’s gout – she was allowed to merely sniff John’s beer – and fearful not for themselves but for those living below the waterline.
Paul and Mel Mitchell had come to pick up a highly prescriptive shopping list from John – “2 x Greek yoghurt 0% fat! 6x Braeburn/Gala apples” – so that he and Helen didn’t need to leave. The Mitchells had in tow their own evacuees: Sara Dickinson and her 17-year-old son James, who stayed with them up the hill on Thursday night. The Dickinsons live right by Whaley Bridge station and decided to leave after seeing neighbours packing their bags, reasoning it was better to be safe than sorry.
All seemed calm after the chaos of the previous day as they sipped their drinks, waving at the passing Chinooks. Every now and again a motorised dinghy would pass. They were filled with sandbags that firefighters were using to try to stop too much water from a higher brook filling the reservoir, which had reduced by 20cm overnight and was half a metre lower by Friday afternoon, according to the emergency services. Julie Sharman, the chief operating officer of the Canal and River Trust, said the water level needed to be reduced by “several more” metres.
Back on Whaley Lane, Jade’s father-in-law was setting off on a mercy mission to get his granddaughters nappies and formula. All of the roads out of the town were shut, but he managed to reach them before they went hungry or dirty. She was grateful but continued to be racked with anxiety: “We don’t have contents insurance. If the dam bursts then Whaley Bridge will be destroyed.”
Further down the hill, on a patch of land known as Cow Field, Currie was offering help to Di Bowker, who had been forced to leave her home below Bings Wood. Bowker, who works in a label factory in Whaley that had also been evacuated, received relatively early warning that she had to leave. Before she left, she put her favourite records and photo albums on her bed upstairs, along with all important documentation, but left with scarcely more than the clothes she stood up in. Still, at least she had the veteran of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here to help her cope in trying circumstances. “I’ve got plenty of clean knickers at my house if you need them,” Currie said.
