Lessons will be learned says minister as she praises flood victims

Published on Monday 7 December 2009 22:10

ENVIRONMENT minister Roseanna Cunningham yesterday pledged that lessons would be learned from the floods which devastated the Aberdeenshire town of Stonehaven at the start of last month.

She praised the "resilience" of the townspeople as she visited the community for the first time since more than 80 homes and businesses in the centre of the town were badly flooded when the River Carron burst its banks after days of torrential rain.

Six weeks on from the devastation, the initial clear-up has been completed. But it may be almost next Christmas before some families can finally return home.

Ms Cunningham, who spent more than an hour visiting residents and business owners affected by the flood, said that if mistakes were made in dealing with the emergency, it was vital that they were not repeated.

Local community leaders have condemned what they claimed was a "lack of preparedness" to deal with the emergency and failures in the response to the worst flooding to hit the town in living memory.

She said: "It is important that we do learn lessons from this and that is something I think that people will begin to focus on as the weeks go by. It is very important that each time this happens we learn something from it to ensure that lessons are then applied the next time.

"I would not stand in the way of a local inquiry should they (the townspeople] feel that is required. All of us at every level are going to be assessing quite critically what was done and what was not done."

She said, however, that she had been impressed by the way the whole community had responded to the emergency, adding: "What will probably happen here is that Stonehaven will end up a stronger community."

One of the residents visited by Ms Cunningham was Helen Swan, 39, whose hairdresser's shop and home in the High Street were both damaged by the rising waters.

The damage to her home alone has been estimated at 150,000.

Ms Swan, a mother of two, said she had managed to reopen for business within days of the flood. However, she said it would be at least autumn of next year before she could return to her two-storey home behind her shop.

She said: "We still have the dehumidifiers on 24/7 and they are still filling bucket after bucket. Right now I don't even want to think what Christmas is going to be like for me and my family. But it's going to be hard."