Whaley Bridge dam: The people who saved a village
More than 1,000 people have worked day and night for the past seven days to stop a reservoir dam collapsing and destroying a village in the Peak District. These are some of the stories of those who helped save Whaley Bridge from near disaster.The reservoir at the bottom of Father Jamie Mcleod's driveway had never looked so full. On 31 July, the sight of the water cascading down the spillway was glorious, he thought.
The clergyman would not sleep again for four days. As villagers fled, a wave of hi vis-clad construction workers and emergency service workers arrived, and he could see they would need feeding. Father Mcleod has run the full gamut of emotions, from fear to sadness and ultimately relief as water levels and the risk of a collapse receded.
Until last month, PC Tom Gee's team consisted of himself and one other person. Thankfully, they had recently trained up another 23 people. The drone has clocked up more than 10 hours throughout the operation - a fair amount considering each flight is just a few minutes long. "When the dam was failing, you could literally see it failing before your eyes - people would have died."Gavin Tomlinson has overseen the pumping of water from the reservoir by the fire service
"This will be a blueprint for the country on how to deal with something like this happening again. Hopefully it's only a one-time thing."Three things needed to be done to save the dam. More than 450 bags, each weighing a tonne, have been placed with precision into the concrete crevice by a helicopter whose rotor-blades swirled just 3m from a metal footbridge."The safety margins are at their finest."It is all done by eye, with the three crew and two pilots aboard all having spent hours training themselves to recognise such finite distances.
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