Over 2,000 sandbags deployed and 19% of entire council stock of salt used as Wrexham dealt with floods and snow

Over 2,000 sandbags were deployed in the fight against the recent flooding it has been revealed.

The data came to light as  Wrexham Council’s Chief Executive Ian Bancroft gave a ‘factual update’ over the efforts locally ,”We had heavy rainfall on Thursday, that resulted in the River Dee reaching its highest recorded levels. We were dealing with an incident that was very severe in terms of the height of the River Dee due to the rainfall, that resulted clearly in a severe flood warning.

“On Thursday evening there were two critical incidents called. The reason for that is because there is considered to be a risk of loss of life. We were dealing with a critical incident through from Thursday through to Saturday. The two areas were around Banger on Dee and the Lower Dee Valley, including the Holt and Rossett areas, but obviously there were flooding in other areas – in New Broughton and also flooding of houses in the Ceiriog Valley.

“Our role through Thursday to Saturday was, and working through the night, to evacuate residents, get them to rest centres, and do our work around getting sandbags out, and also to get people and return people back to their houses. It was extremely well organised and everybody put in a huge contribution.”

“At two o’clock on Saturday, we had the last critical incident reduced. We then started to recover, particularly in the critical incident areas over the weekend. Then from Monday we are starting to recover in every area across the borough where floodings occurred. The main emphasis on recovery is around dealing with people who’ve had houses flooded, making sure they’ve got the right advice, and clearing any blockages as a result of the storm.

“Then obviously what we start to look at is plan preventative work the future,  the other piece of work that we do is a lessons learned review.”

Mr Bancroft also gave a range of figures that illustrated the effort that took place:

• 40-50 environment staff working on Thursday
• 140 separate incidents dealt with on Thursday
• Over 2,000 sandbags deployed
• 1500 tons (90% of entire stock) of salt deployed to deal with the snow. Update: Council have said this is 19% of the entire stock.
• 233 flood calls logged
• 169 reports logged via the council website.
• 24 calls on Sunday alone that were in relation to housing issues
• 18 pumps deployed by the fire service across North Wales
• 8 4×4 off road vehicles deployed in Wrexham (with added thanks to the volunteer drives who were ‘critical’ in dealing with incidents)
• 2 boats deployed by the fire service in Wrexham.

Mr Bancroft said, “I think that gets across the scale of the incident due to the heavy rain and the historic height of the River Dee.”

The Leader of the Council Mark Pritchard added his thanks, “Could I also just take the opportunity to thank everybody, all the elected members, members of the public, all the departments who have been involved with the floods that we’ve had to deal with this last week. Can I say it’s been very difficult for us all involved really to deal with the floods, and to see the human impact and the distress it causes on individuals when they have their homes flooded.”

“I would like to thank everybody who’s been involved. All the departments across this council, all our partners, fire police, ambulance, everybody. All emergency services, Natural Resource Wales, flood wardens, everybody. If I missed anybody, I do apologise. We’ve had a tough, difficult time with it. Hopefully, things will start to slow down, and we can start to rebuild and recover in these areas.”

Mr Bancroft echoed the comments, adding “It was a severe incident and one that we’re just thankful that we had no major issues in terms of effects on individuals or effects on communities that we cannot recover from. So we’re thankful for that, and we will learn the lessons from this emergency.”