What happened to the ‘flying caravan’ in Dundee which landed on its roof in a garden during Storm Arwen?
The caravan went viral online over the weekend after Steven Aitchison posted a photo of the mobile upside down on his front garden wall with the caption: “I’m declaring myself the winner of what’s landed in my garden 2021.”
The post, which now has over 26,000 shares and 10,000 likes, attracted a lot of attention over the UK amid the 90mph winds storm which swept the nation.
Andy Will, owner of independent recovery company, Tay Recoverys, is friends with the owner of the caravan and said he was asked to help get the motorhome down from his neighbour’s wall in the Douglas area of Dundee on Friday night.
Andy said: “I saw the photo online and I was looking at it and I thought, I’m sure that’s my mate’s caravan.
“I went to phone him but he phoned me first and said: ‘I confirm that it was my caravan, it’s currently not at the moment, it’s in somebody else’s garden’.”
‘You can’t park it there’
Andy said he agreed to help move the caravan and joked to his pal “well you can’t park it there.”
Andy had called in his friend Shaun Simpson, a driver at City Cab Recovery, to help with the mammoth task during Storm Arwen.
Shaun said: “It’s not something you get a phone call for every day.
“I will admit to it, it was a bit of a challenge, it must have taken us about an hour in total to get it back on its feet again.
“In between that and fighting with the wind at the same time, that was really the mission but it’s something to put on the CV.”
Where is it now?
When Andy and Shaun arrived at the scene on Ballater Place at around 10pm, they said that the fire services had already attempted to secure the caravan on the wall.
Shaun said: “When we got there, the fire services (had) put barrier tape up but they weren’t too sure if the wind was going to pick back up.
“We were going to leave it until the morning but there was some concerns from the owners of the house so we said: ‘Let’s get it turned now.’
“The wall was taken out completely.
“We put some of the slabs from the wall into the caravan just to actually weigh it down just in case it tried to take flight again.”
Now facing the right way up, the damaged caravan remains parked in Ballater Place.
Shaun said that the owner of the caravan, who did not want to comment, had ripped out the contents to convert it into a ‘beer caravan’ which is why the vehicle was so light.
“He was in the process of doing it up to do that so you kind of feel sorry for him,” Shaun said.
Neighbours heard ‘awful bang’
One resident of Ballater Place who lives across from the garden where the caravan landed said he was sitting in his house when he heard a loud bang
He said: “We were sitting watching the telly and we suddenly heard an awful bang.
“We thought it was the wind and then my wife looked out the window and saw the caravan – the thing was upside down.”
He added: “A short while later we saw the blue lights of a fire engine about half an hour or so later we saw yellow lights for the recovery vehicles and they took it off the wall and put it on the street.
“It’s an old caravan so we weren’t surprised, it has seen better days.”
‘Nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing’
Another neighbour said: “We heard a bang and looked out the window and said: ‘oh my God’.
“It’s not often you see that.
“It’s just lightweight, there was nothing in it so it must have just floated.
“I know there was a lot of people at the windows looking to see what was going on. You couldn’t sit down and not watch it but nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing.”
A spokesperson for Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, said: “We got the call at around 5:47pm.
“We sent one appliance from Kingsway fire station.
“Firefighters worked to secure the caravan.
“We received the stop at 6:15pm.”
