Hastings traders left counting cost following town centre flooding

John Bownas, manager of Love Hastings, said more shops were affected this time, compared to January’s flooding.

Water reached Trespass in Priory Meadow’s Queen’s Square, which earlier in the year escaped damage, he said.

Pubs, clubs and shops in and around Wellington Place and Robertson Street saw sewage flooding their basements, with Millets’ stockroom under about three feet of water, which poured in via a manhole to the sewer running beneath York Gardens.

Mr Bownas said Station Road businesses were among the worst hit from surface water flooding in the main town centre.

He said: “Alerts are thought to have first been sounded by the owners of Bar Moda, who began trying to call Southern Water and others for help around 6.30am. However, it wasn’t until after 8am when fire crews began to be alerted and attended several properties in the town centre that it was realised that a major incident was emerging.”

As of this morning (Monday, October 30), Trespass, Robert Dyas, HMV, Vision Express, HFS Furniture Services, F Hinds, TheWorks.co.uk and Primark were closed in Priory Meadow.

Floodwater started rapidly rising from behind Marks and Spencer in South Terrace, and within a very short space of time their service yard was under several feet of water, which came almost half way up Primark’s loading bay doors and quickly flooded the store, as well as flowing in through Boots and out into the main mall, Mr Bownas said.

This floodwater quickly found its way through to Queen’s Square where it met with the sewer water that was seen jetting several feet into the air from the manhole cover opposite the Three store and Smokemart newsagents, which lost tens of thousands of pounds worth of stock.

Mr Bownas said he was called out just after 8am and joined the emergency response team throughout the day, as efforts were made to make people safe, pump away the water, and protect properties from further flooding as the weather forecast constantly changed throughput the day and into Sunday morning.

He said: “There was a terrible déjà vu as I arrived to see people trapped in shops in Station Road with floodwater already at waist height outside their doors. A few fire crews were already on hand, but due to the state of the roads in the area it took a while for the big high-pressure pumps to arrive.

“What was immediately apparent was that the sources of water hitting the town seemed identical to what I saw in January. The only difference seemed to be that this time water was running fast out of the culvert outflow on Pelham beach - however still not fast enough to take pressure off the pipe below South Terrace where the culvert is closest to the surface. And there was clearly more water coming into the chamber at the top of the beach than was getting out to sea, because the beach and road were flooded from water coming out of the manhole cover.

“I did try to get a fire team down to check the culvert pipe was completely clear, but the tide was already too high, and with the big waves at the time it was too dangerous.

“Later in the day, once we could see into the chamber at the top of the beach it was clear that the big tidal flap valve, that I’m told weighs eight tonnes, had jumped off its hinge somehow – and I understand that the whole area will need excavating to get it back in place. However, that said, the water still seemed to be flowing through it OK, although oddly it looked a lot slower than at the far end of the outflow where the stream eventually gets into the sea.

“My first instinct was to get around to as many of the affected businesses as I could to collect evidence of what was happening, because the irony is that just a week before this all happened we finally saw the publication of the county council’s report on January’s floods. This came out months after it should have, and was frankly lacking in any real conclusions or recommendations from the consultants who wrote it – a classic case of too little, too late.

“There are clearly inaccuracies in the report’s mapping, with a storm overflow from the sewers marked on the beach in front of Harold Place, which we now believe has been capped off. However time was wasted on Saturday looking to find this to see if it was running clear.

“And despite the fact that many of the flooded properties were affected from sewers beneath them there was no real evidence that the cause of this had been examined or any solutions offered.

“Fundamentally we need a fresh and properly independent multi-agency review of everything we have learned from these two recent incidents, and we need to look at long-term solutions including finding ways to make use of reservoir capacity up stream to keep the pressure off the town centre during flash floods.

“Hastings town centre has been there since Victorian times and has suffered many floods over that time, but these last two incidents seem to be different in several ways from what has happened before, and we have to get to the bottom of exactly what is going on so that our businesses can have the confidence to clear up and get trading again.”