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Flood-hit Brechin residents voice concerns at council as £16.3million defence pumps ‘not turned on’

Kim Clark stands outside with the carpet and vinyl flooring she's had to rip up due to flooding. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson
Kim Clark stands outside with the carpet and vinyl flooring she's had to rip up due to flooding. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson

Brechin residents have criticised Angus Council’s lack of organisation after Friday’s weather conditions caused flooding in the town.

As River Street experienced extreme flooding on Friday, residents came to notice that some of the flood defence pumps used to contain the flow were turned off.

The £16.3 million prevention scheme opened in 2016 and was hailed as a protection measure “for generations to come”.

51-year-old carer Kim Clark was forced to evacuate her property with fiancé Paul Fowlie and her two children due to the damage caused by the flooding.

She said: “I was up at 7:45am and Paul told me that the park behind us was flooded.

“It started to come into our garden so I reached out to the council to inform them what was going on and for the defence system to be activated and I was told that it wouldn’t flood.

“We contacted the fire control room to send out fire engines but they declined. I was told that because the water wasn’t entering the house they wouldn’t need to come to assist.

Kim Clark carries a sandbag in her back garden which was left totally flooded. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson

“We were left to our own devices, sandbags were dumped and it was up to Paul and our neighbour Chris to place them along the street.

“We knew we had to leave the house at around 2pm. There were barriers in the shed that we used to keep the water at bay but all of a sudden it came pouring in.”

Taking matters into their own hands

After experiencing their house being flooded three times in 20 years, Kim shared her plans on what she can do to prevent it from happening again.

She said: “We’re going to create a community group where we get together and discuss why this happened and why it couldn’t have been handled correctly.

“We have been discussing moving away. We’ve had enough.”

58-year-old joiner Chris Maguire pointed out that it was up to both him and his 19-year-old daughter Inca to turn on the pumps.

Chris Maguire beside the pump box behind his house which wasn’t turned on during the storm leading to flooding. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson

Chris said: “At around 3pm one of our neighbours said to me that he didn’t think the pumps were on. We informed the council employee and he returned around an hour later with the keys for the pump box.

“We opened the doors and noticed that both pumps were turned off. Another was out of action due to an external block, lowering the pumping levels to 50 per cent.

“There’s a switchboard and the man didn’t know how to turn it on. Inca got him to press a button to get the pumps on.

Chris and his daughter Inca realised that the pumps were either turned off or had an external block, preventing the flood defences from operating. Image: Chris Maguire

“After turning the pumps on we walked from one end of River Street to the other, the water was at knee length. We got to the second batch of pumps and they were turned off too.

“It took around two hours for the water to clear. All they needed to do was arrive with the keys and turn the machine on, something me and my daughter did easily.”

Angus Council says decisions had to be made to prioritise saving lives, not property.

The full response is available here.

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