Fishlake flooding: Residents' experiences of South Yorkshire disaster to be captured in new play written by man forced to flee his home

It was just after midnight on November 9, 2019, when he, wife Carolyn and their two boys, Benjamin and William piled into the car with a handful of bags, evacuating their family home with no idea when they would be able to return.

In just a matter of hours, the residents of Fishlake in South Yorkshire had their lives turned upside down.

Torrential downpours had sparked disastrous flooding, with around 170 homes and businesses in the village affected by the devastation.

Jeremy’s was one of them. He and his family were forced to move out for nine months, 80 per cent of their furniture and possessions destroyed.

Using verbatim accounts from family, friends and neighbours, Jeremy will tell the tale of the nightmare they endured.

Looking back on the night, he says: “We were running around thinking what matters basically, what do we genuinely need to take, what do we need to do. It’s like an out of body experience when you think back.

“It felt a bit like we were letting the kids down not being able to take more - we probably had about 20 minutes to pack some stuff.

“We were okay, running on adrenaline, but when we left the house Carolyn was in floods of tears. It was so heartbreaking, not knowing when we could come back and what would happen.”

Jeremy has lived in Fishlake all of his life and though he can recall “close shaves”, he hadn’t experienced flooding before.

Perhaps that’s why, as the River Don burst its banks and events unfolded that night, he found it hard to believe. That evening, November 8, began like any other Friday for Jeremy and Carolyn.

After putting their boys, then seven and ten, to bed, they were enjoying a meal, when Carolyn checked her phone and saw someone had posted on social media about swimming down a road just half a mile away from them.

Jeremy originally shrugged it off as “dramatic”, but when his wife came across a picture minutes later of a kitchen flooded with water, he took a walk through the village to see for himself.

“The water was coming through the village, slowly coming up, down one of the roads and there was people being evacuated from their homes, trying to move out,” he says.

By the time he got back home, water began pooling around their own house. It wasn’t long before it was inside.

A wet patch appeared on the carpet; it soon became a puddle and then two inches of water.

“It just started rising on the little cul-de-sac we lived on. All the neighbours were just in complete shock really, thinking this is actually going to happen.

“It was only really at that late point that we started running around and moving stuff to higher ground and packing a bag for the kids.

“The next thing we looked out the window and the back garden was completely covered in water and then it felt like time stood still.

“Everybody was in their houses panicking and packing or they’d gone off already and then you could hear this gentle flow and realised it was water coming in through the air bricks below the floor. It was just heartbreaking.”

By the time the family left, the water was knee-deep. “My youngest son had slept through so I picked him up out of their bunk bed and I gave him a fireman’s lift,” Jeremy recalls

“The other one had clocked on that something was happening, he had been to bed and then got up and had been sat in the bay window watching his fish (Benjamin had recently received a tropical fish tank for his birthday) and looking worried.

“I asked him to pack a bag and he got his Xbox, his football kit and football boots - and his brother’s as well, and a football. I think he was just in shock like the rest of us really...

“You try to protect your children and keep them safe and when that happens to your home, the place where you are all the time, it’s like it robbed a bit of their innocence.”

The family tried to leave by car, but water flooded the engine and they were stranded for several hours before being rescued.

Just over a week later, they moved to rented property in Carlton near Selby, staying there for nine months whilst dealing with the insurance company and slowly bringing their house back to life.

The first visit they paid to their dormer bungalow was just a matter of days after they fled from the flooding.

Water had risen to reach the windowsills at its deepest, leaving behind a trail of destruction.

“Until you see it, you don’t believe it. You think maybe the water hasn’t got that high,” Jeremy says. “I mean we’d seen the news footage so we knew really, but we just needed to see for ourselves.

“When the insurers send people around after the flood, they basically take everything that’s been contaminated and stick it in a massive pile outside your house.

“So there’s this huge pile of all your stuff just dumped outside - it looked like someone had flytipped the contents of our house on our driveway.”

Both of the family’s cars were written off from water damage. Family heirlooms and precious memories had been destroyed.

As the initial clean-up got underway, the village became the centre of media attention, with visits from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and from Prince Charles.

But while the cameras have disappeared, the trauma of the flooding and the arduous journey since will not be forgotten by the many residents and businesses who found themselves affected.

Speaking earlier this year, he said: “When the flooding happened, we had literally every TV and radio station here but now they’ve gone it’s important to keep it in the mind’s eye.

“Theatre at its best engages people and keeps important issues like climate change at the forefront of the public’s minds, which is what I’m hoping to do.”

Jeremy plans to run a series of discussion workshops in the village, recording people’s experiences. From that, he will devise the piece of theatre.

It is hoped that the as-yet unnamed play will run at Cast theatre in Doncaster next Autumn, to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the flooding.

To get involved, contact Jeremy on Twitter via @FishlakeFlood or by emailing [email protected].