South Yorkshire floods

Fire service historian and author

Roger Mardon

www.romar.org.uk

Although there isn't a river directly next to Toll Bar - the River Don is about three miles away - there are a number of becks, dykes and drains all of which lead into the river. However, the big problem at Toll Bar was that all these water courses filled up during the torrential rain that lasted many hours and overflowed into the village. Although levels had dropped in the rivers, there was still an immense amount of standing water that had nowhere to go so it just stayed where it was, flooding the village from one end to the other.

The main equipment in use was the New Dimension high volume pumping unit provided as a national resource by Central Government's Department for Communities and Local Government. There are 48 strategically positioned with fire & rescue services in England and Wales and, as at 26 June, 27 had been deployed for the flood relief operation, 18 of them in South Yorkshire.

The vehicles are able to act as hose layers and the hose can be paid out from the back as the vehicle travels at up 25mph. The high volume pump modules have been dismounted from these vehicles and hose is laid from the pump to the discharge point.

As operations progressed new hose lines were laid by a Hampshire HVPU on top of the existing lines to keep the obstructed road width to a minimum.

Each vehicle carries one demountable high volume pump and a demountable hose box containing 1km of 150mm (6-inch) hose, or two hose boxes. Each pump can move up to 8000 litres of water a minute, three times the quantity of a standard fire engine pump. HVPs are seen here at work in Toll Bar.