Residents of an Aberdeenshire village have revealed how they battled to save their neighbours’ homes from water – just months after they were repaired from the last flood.
About five ground floor flats at Hamilton House in Newburgh were filled with more than 4in of water after a nearby burn overflowed on Friday.
The stream off Main Street – which narrows into a culvert near the building, and is a tributary to the Ythan Estuary – previously caused flooding misery in December 2014.
Families had only recently restored their homes when the flooding took place.
The burn was overwhelmed with water starting on Thursday night, bursting its banks at about 1.30am.
Emergency services were called, but due to flooding elsewhere in Aberdeenshire, residents were forced to tackle the fast-flowing waters with the help of just two policemen from Peterhead.
Locals described a torrent of water rushing across Main Street, caused by flooding to the River Ythan.
Clair Robertson lives in a property close to the affected area with her partner, Barry Morrison, and their two-year-old son, Jack.
The 31-year-old medical secretary said: “We managed to hold it back for a wee while, but there was just nothing we could do. I didn’t go to sleep. We stayed awake because we knew high tide was at midnight.
“We kept going out and checking it and checking it. We put up sandbags hoping it would stop.
“It’s the culvert there, it can’t cope. We can’t do anything about it.”
Site manager Greig Simmers was asleep in his upper floor flat at Hamilton House when he was woken up by knocking on his door.
The 29-year-old immediately jumped into action to fight the “nightmare” situation.
He said: “We just had to muck in, put sandbags down, and it was a waiting game. These people living here – everything was getting in their doors, so we had to get them out as well.
“It was just choking up all the time, but we got there. It started disappearing once we started with the shovels. The water was streaming out.
“We only had the two police officers and it was just us and whoever else could manage. A few of them were singing away, and there was a good community spirit. It was good the way they dealt with it.”