Boscastle flooding 2004

Boscastle flooding On 16th of August, 2007, the village of Boscastle was flooded. Houses were wreaked, but amazingly no-one died. Rescue operations were successful, airlifting 150 people to safety.

Why did it happen? The moor had been saturated and the water had no-where to go. It ran down the Valency valley, and into the village. There was only two rivers for the water to flow into. The topography of the land meant that the water flowed into the village. The high ground around Boscastle meant that clouds had to rise up and so condensed, creating lots of rain falling in one place. The coastal winds also

Where did it happen? Boscastle Boscastle

Boscastle flood numbers More than 150 people had been airlifted up into helicopters. 75 mm fell in two hours on Monday - the August average rainfall. At the peak of the flood, the river flow rate was 140 tonnes per hour. The flood water carried cars, trees and debris at 10 mph. 2 million tonnes of water flowed through Boscastle in one day.

An eyewitness account Alan Graham was in Boscastle with his family on holiday. He was in the tourist office with them when the flooding started. "The front door of the visitors centre smashed through and torrents of water came in until, in the end, half the visitors' centre got smashed away," he said.

An eyewitness account (cont.) "We got ourselves on to the roof. We were there for about half an hour in freezing cold rain until the helicopter came along and picked us up, one by one. "There were 60ft trees just going down the river like matchsticks - as soon as one of those hit the front of the visitors centre, it just wiped away all the structure of it." Taken from BBC News

Can you stop it from happening again? A report on the Boscastle flood defences You can't predict when a flash flood will happen, but you can put sandbags in front of doors and make flood defence walls.