Walking around Alyth today, it’s difficult to imagine the scene of utter devastation from 12 months ago.
Today, cars are neatly parked in the main square, not piled up on top of each other; skips full of rubbish don’t move by themselves down the high street and nobody needs to be rescued by boat from their first floor flat.
But the heart-breaking events of July 17, 2015, are still very real memories for the people living and working in the rural Perthshire town.
Torrential downpours that morning caused widespread destruction. The area was hammered by 35 cubic metres of rainwater per second, causing a 15 cubic metre-capacity burn which runs through the centre of the community to burst its banks.
Experts later described the six-hour deluge as a one-in-200 year flood.
Dozens of homes and businesses were swamped, while three footbridges collapsed and were washed away by the extreme force of the water.
“It’s so easy to get paranoid every time it rains now,” said Ashley Boath who runs the award-winning Cafe in the Square with her husband Stephen. “Every time you see dark clouds coming over, your heart just sinks.”
The couple’s business, at the heart of the town, was one the worst affected. They were forced to close a popular bakery attached to the cafe.
“We lost the Bake House altogether and the cafe was closed for weeks,” she said. “But you could see great community spirit in action. People turned up with mops and buckets and local tradesmen came along to lift floors and cut out plasterboard.
“When we were finally ready to open again, we were worried about asking people to come along and support the business, because a lot of folk were still out of their homes.
“But they really did turn out. Everybody rallied round.”
Mr Boath was working in the bakery when the downpour hit. “The water was just gushing in,” said Ashley. “He got some big metal sheets to put across the doorway.
“But then the wall outside the hotel collapsed and that surge of water just pushed right through.
“You could see the freezers, which were full of stock, floating in the water.
“Our new car, which was parked outside the Bake House, just got up and floated off. That’s the red Isignia you see in all the photos.”
In Commercial Street, staff at the recently refurbished Price Cracker were fighting their own losing battle against the deluge.
Owner Sandy Sarwar said the flood caused over £100,000 worth of damage to his store.
“It has been a very tough year for the whole community,” he said. “I took over the shop on June 5. We refitted it and opened up on June 12.
“Five weeks later, we were completely flooded out.”
He said: “It was the end of Ramadan and I had said to the staff I would give them a hand to open up in the morning, before I left to attend celebrations at the mosque.
“Everything just happened so quickly,” he said. “In a matter of moments there was water coming through the front door.
“I tried using a sponge to mop it up, but it just kept flowing.
“I put some cases of coke cans against the door, but pretty soon they were floating around the shop.”
He managed to pull down the shutters and lock the door, but it didn’t hold the water off for long.
“It started coming in at the front and the back,” he said. “That’s when we all had to retreat to our flat upstairs.”
Sandy was eventually rescued by firefighters using an inflatable raft.
“I lost so much that day because I was under insured,” he said. “I just never expected anything like that could happen.”
The neighbouring Alyth Hotel was restored at a cost of around £250,000.
Local councillor Ian Miller, who is leader of Perth and Kinross Council, said he had never seen anything like it.
“I think everyone was just in a state of shock,” he said. “We have had flooding in Alyth before, but there had been nothing in living memory on that scale. It was just unbelievable.”
That morning, the town hall was opened as an emergency shelter and it was soon filled with donations of food and clothing from businesses and families across Tayside and beyond.
Police, fire crews, Sepa officers and council workers joined forces. Mr Miller said: “If I don’t say so myself, it was a tremendous piece of organisation, event down to the social services who were providing accommodation to people who had found themselves flooded out of their homes.”
Soon, tenders will go out for the restoration of the bridges. The public is now voting to either replace all three crossing (which will mean less parking) or just two.
Work will be carried out in new year, and all being well Alyth will be back to normal by the end of March 2017.
Councillor Dennis Melloy said the bridges are very important to the town. “Business in Commercial Street which were all flooded out, badly need these bridges replaced,” he said.
