Julie Blackburn visits Laxey and discovers the reality of life for some residents after October’s flood.

It was the ornaments that did it for me.

A little row of china elephants, rescued from the flood and lined up on an outside windowsill.

The sort of things a child might save up to buy you for Christmas because they knew that elephants were your favourite animal.

The sort of things that fill your house with memories every time you look at them.

Nothing of great financial value but in their own way priceless. Things that make a house a home.

Next door, a lifetime’s collection of books fills a skip. On a driveway nearby a car is parked.

It looks normal from the outside but when you open the door there is thick mould hanging off the steering wheel and covering the seats.

The owner had only bought it six weeks before the flood but now he will never drive it again as all the electrics have been destroyed.

This is what is left when thousands of litres of flood water rush through your property, sweeping away everything in its path.

And it’s what some of the people of Laxey are facing as Christmas approaches and their house, as they knew it, is no longer there.

The bricks and mortar are still standing - just - but everything inside that made it a home has gone.

Eighteen months before the flooding, Dennis Kneale had just finished work on a brand new property on Glen Road. Dennis, who is retired, had carefully planned every detail of the new house, aiming to ’future proof’ it by putting in an extra bedroom and bathroom downstairs.

The property was built on land adjoining his former home, which he had sold. Both were underwater in the floods last month. Dennis was on holiday at the time but his daughter-in-law, Hannah Kneale, who lives just up the hill behind, was on hand in the immediate aftermath.

She recalls: ’My husband Dan left for work at about 7.30am and as he crossed the bridge he noticed the river was a bit high and a bit fierce.

’At 8.30am his sister was calling him from Switzerland saying: "Get back to Laxey, Dad’s house might be flooded." She had seen it on Facebook.

’I went down to have a look. It was close to 9am and you couldn’t get into Glen Road at that point. The water wasn’t very deep, about two feet, but it was terrifically forceful and pouring down the road from a breach near the Woollen Mills.

’It was so forceful the fire engine almost got swept into the river through the hole in the wall outside my father-in-law’s house and all the firemen had to jump off the truck and shelter in the nearby houses.’

’A lot of the cars had been shoved by this water and crashed into each other and you could see the damage as you walked along: there were so many cars totalled.’

When Hannah managed to reach her father-in-law’s house an extraordinary sight met her eyes: the 1,000-litre oil tank had been had been shoved about a foot out of place, causing the connecting pipe to break so oil was escaping and some koi carp, who had been washed out of the next door neighbour’s pond, were swimming down the garden path.

’There were fish all over the place and I managed to rescue some of them,’ says Hannah.

Inside it was even worse. ’The whole of the ground floor was underfloor heating with a huge great concrete slab and the water came up underneath the slab and cracked the slab and it was like this - ,’ she says, steepling her fingers,

’It soaked into the fabric of the walls: they had three industrial driers in there and they’ve only just taken them out. We decided to take the flooring out, too, so the floor could dry out more quickly and that was such a shame because it was all brand new.

’He had a filing cabinet with all his important documents: wills, birth certificates, all sorts if things and that was on the floor - I was there for hours, ironing all these documents, things like a lovely old newspaper cutting of his brother’s wedding.’

The koi carp Hannah rescued belonged to Beryl Ackerley whose home took the brunt of the water.

She and her husband Colin and grown-up son Giles moved into the house in 2006 and they had been slowly and lovingly replastering, decorating and extending it ever since.

The floodwater undid all their years of hard work within minutes and now the whole of the downstairs interior has had to be taken back to bare stone and breezeblock walls and all the carpets have been ripped out.

A conservatory they had built onto the kitchen was completely swept away, along with its foundations, as the water rushed through the ground floor and boards nailed onto the walls cover the gaping hole it left behind.

Beryl recalls the confusion as the river burst its banks: ’I called the emergency services.

’I didn’t know what was happening and they said: "There’s fire crew in the area, just stay upstairs and ring back if you’re worried about anything."

’There was my husband, myself, my son, the dog and the cat and the rabbit, all looking out of the bedroom window and obviously it was getting higher.

’For a long time it hadn’t affected the neighbouring properties but you could see it all building up by the weir.

’You could see it all getting higher and higher and then you could hear creaking and a crash and this massive tree came. I just screamed out of the window to the fire crew and it hit the drive just over there and it came down like dominoes.’

Beryl shows me a video she took from the bedroom window, showing a river of water coming down her drive: you can just see the top of her garden wall.

Ten minutes later another video shows the water so high that all you can see is the tops of the gateposts and the roof of a car in the road outside.

Beryl takes me into what was once their study.

It used to be lined with all the books Colin collected, the same ones that are now filling the skip in the road outside.

She says: ’Every single item in this house was condemned, even the woodburners and the flue. I haven’t even a piece of paper from either of the desks that were in here.

’There was also a filing cabinet that stored all our paperwork so we’ve got no history any more.

’Everything was such a mess and they came in the next day and told me everything had to go.

’But they didn’t start till the following Monday and by then I’d got time to get used to the idea that I didn’t have anything left.

’If they’d just turned up and taken it all I think it would have been hard.’

Although Beryl has great praise for her insurance company and the contractors working on her house, her plan to be back living there in March looks optimistic. In the meantime they are in rented accommodation and the difficulty of finding somewhere that will take a dog has meant that the family has been split up.

She says: ’Colin and I are in Groudle with the dog, my son is in Lonan, the cat’s in the cattery and the rabbit’s at a friend’s.’

And what about plans for Christmas?

’We’ll probably just go away,’ she says sadly.

A Department of Infrastructure spokesman told the Examiner: ’Work is progressing well on the new river wall in Glen Road, Laxey.

’Diversions have been required to important utility services and are now two thirds complete, allowing work on the wall to resume.

’River levels are monitored on a daily basis, with staff ready to act on receipt of weather warnings.’

Is Laxey still in danger?

While last month was the first time that the Ackerleys’ and the Kneales’ homes have been hit, further down the Glen Road properties have been flooded on a number of occasions.

Richard Henthorn at the Laxey Laundry near the new bridge told me: ’This is the third time we have been hit. In 2002 we were hit, badly, and in 2015, badly. We put in extensive flood protection, heavy duty doors and aluminium barriers but it ran down Minorca Hill by the flats and came in.

’It was also coming up through the drains. After the previous flood the MUA had promised to put in non-returnable valves but they never did and we had water bubbling up out of the sewers.

’Our insurance has become almost unmanageable. If we got flooded again that would be the end of us.

’I’m pacing round in the house every time it rains, waiting for something to happen.’

Andrew Smith, who has formed the Garff Flood Action Association, also lives along the Glen Road. His home has been flooded three times and he is alarmed that work which might help to prevent it from happening again seems to be going at what he describes as ’a snail’s pace’.

The major concern is the progress being made towards finishing the new wall alongside the river to protect the Glen Road.

An old concrete arch had been obstructing the river a little further down, causing debris to gather and form a dam which eventually burst. This was demolished immediately after the flooding and contractors have taken an estimated 40 tons of trees and other debris from the river. This has alleviated residents’ concerns somewhat but, on the day we visited, it was raining heavily and the river was in full flow, just centimetres from the top of the bank right in front of Beryl and Dennis’ homes, where there is still a gap in the wall.

Andrew says: ’There was a real sense of urgency in the first two or three days [after the flood] and I wouldn’t have expected that to continue but the snail’s pace now is absolutely ridiculous.

’They need to get the job done, split shifts, maximise the daylight hours and just get on with it because every time we hear there’s a shower or possible localised flooding we’re worried to death.’

And, in a letter to the Garff Flood Action Association, Mr Henthorn reflects residents’ concerns that this might become yet another instance of their warnings not being acted on.

He writes: ’Whilst we realise that no one can stop the rain coming out of the sky, and it is not the MUA’s or government’s responsibility to "prevent" flooding, the events could have been alleviated or even avoided had both the DoI and the MUA more fully acted upon the concerns and observations of residents following the previous events.’