'Horrendous': Welsh residents endure lockdown in flood-hit homes
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Version 0 of 1. Two months after storms battered south Wales, many are trapped in damp and damaged homes Back in February, the residents of Lewis Street in the village of Pentre, in the Rhondda Valley, were battling flooding as a series of storms battered south Wales. Two months on, many of them are enduring the trauma of being locked down in homes that are still damp and damaged. “We feel frightened,” said Lian Roderick, who lives in a terraced house on Lewis Street with her two teenage children and her parents. “Me and the children are type one diabetics. We’re not going out at all. My sister is doing the shopping. We just potter around the house and the garden.” Refurbishment of their house was progressing steadily until the Covid-19 outbreak, though they were still waiting for carpets to be fitted downstairs and for walls to be replastered. “It’s all on hold,” said Roderick. “They wanted to come in and start putting the plasterboard up last week but being diabetics we’re too scared to have people come in.” Lewis Street is a strange sight. The water has gone but sandbags are still piled up everywhere. Children peer out of windows, still in pyjamas in the afternoon. Some houses are deserted, their occupants having been temporarily rehoused or fleeing to live with relatives. There was activity outside one property, that of Robert Taylor, 65. Members of his family live in three houses on the street and they are taking it in turns to help each other make their houses habitable. It is Robert’s turn, so his children and grandchildren were helping him rip out floors and walls, observing the two-metre distancing rule. “The flooding was bad enough,” he said. “But the coronavirus on top is something else. “The builder that was doing this house is on shutdown. We’ve come to an agreement that we’ll carry on. The walls are still wet. It’ll be two or three months before we’re back in if we’re lucky. Meanwhile I’m living with my son a few doors down.” More than 1,000 homes were flooded in Wales in February. The Welsh government is ploughing in millions of pounds to help shore up defences and clear culverts to reassure the likes of the Lewis Street residents that it will not happen again. Sandbags are also still piled up around some homes in Wordsworth Gardens on an estate that looks over Pontypridd. Though it is high above the river valley, water poured out of a culvert into homes. Joanne Mardon is shut away in one of the worst-hit houses with four sons, aged 11 to 21. “It’s chaos in here,” she said. “The three younger kids haven’t been out since school broke up and the house is still a mess from the flooding.” The family had been due to go to the seaside at Porthcawl for an Easter break. “You’ve got to laugh or you’d cry,” said Mardon. On the other side of the street, Penny Evans is trying to keep her daughters, Angel, 14, and Tammy, five, occupied. “It’s so difficult not knowing how long it’s going to last,” she said. An extension lead stretches from her house to a caravan parked on the street where her homeless son Justin, 22, is living. He would be sofa-surfing or perhaps even sleeping rough if the caravan was not available. He poked his head out of the caravan door. “It’s a bit cramped in here but it’s better than being on the street,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find somewhere to live and then this virus happened so it’s all stopped.” Neighbours around the Avon Terrace Bridge in the village of Ynyshir, on the banks of the Rhondda Fach river, are doing their best to get by. “It’s been horrendous, unbelievable,” said Susan Lewis. Both her home and that of her elderly, frail mother and stepfather, Janet Jones and Morgan, were flooded. “When the floods came the water was up to my mother’s bed,” she said. “My stepfather was in the water. His quilt was on top of him and only his head was above water.” Lewis said Morgan keeps up with the news. “He watches it and cries a lot. He wakes up in night, wanders about and falls over. I’m up at 4am trying to get him off the floor. But others are suffering more than us and that puts our situation in perspective.” |