A woman carries a dog through flood water on a residential street in Egham in southern England.

London Evening Standard/London


Londoners yesterday told how they were forced to flee their homes as floodwaters threatened to wreck dozens of properties.
Scores of residents in Croydon were evacuated after water from an underground river, the Caterham Bourne, breached defences.
The Environment Agency yesterday morning said 14 severe flood warnings for the Thames remained in force as it warned residents in areas such as Staines, Chertsey and Shepperton to remain vigilant.
In Croydon, firefighters and the army continued to pump water away from more than 150 affected properties between Purley and Kenley.
Elderly residents of a nearby housing block had to be evacuated on a rubber dinghy.
Some households have not had electricity since late last week, with more rain forecast today.
Chris Murray, 49, who lives in Godstone Road with her husband Danny, 48, and sons Conor, 13, and 18-year-old Callum, said: “We were evacuated in quite an aggressive way in the end.
“They said they were going to evacuate us and it was our choice whether we could go. Luckily, we had somewhere to stay but our neighbours were all moved.”
Alistair Snell, 51, of Dale Road, and his partner Andrea White, 48, had to send their three-year-old son Samuel to stay with his grandmother in Essex. “I didn’t want him to see the panic around here or have him watch as his house floods,” Snell said.
“We had turned the house upside down by that point, so there was no point him staying. The waters were at the highest yesterday morning. By lunchtime we had never seen anything like it — water was level with the top of the sandbags.”
Firefighters have been in the area since February 6, pumping water away from Kenley water treatment works. It serves 47,000 homes and supplies must not become contaminated.
Yesterday, three high-volume pumping machines, 15 fire engines and 100 firefighters remained at the scene. The pedestrian underpass at Purley cross, a church car park and school field have been deliberately flooded to hold excess water.
Roads south of Purley station remain closed. Croydon council said the intense rainfall over the past two months had saturated the ground, causing the flow of the Bourne and the water table to increase significantly. The water table is usually 25 metres below ground during the summer months but is now approximately 75cm from the surface.
Elsewhere, riverside properties in Staines, Surrey, were left with sewage under the floorboards and stagnant standing water in gardens.
Surrey police warned “flood tourists” driving off-road vehicles to stay away because they were worsening the damage.
One homeowner, Henry Eastwood, said the house he built himself in the Seventies was left uninhabitable after the ground floor was submerged. He faces a £150,000 repair bill. He said: “It’s been a nightmare and we’ve had to throw away every single item of furniture. We were wading about chest-high in the water downstairs and moved upstairs, but the damp was so bad we had to sleep in a caravan on the drive.”
In Chertsey, Surrey, six-day-old premature twins were rescued from their flooded house just hours after they were brought home from hospital. One of the main train lines serving London — First Capital Connect — was able to run only half of its services after a tunnel through the South Downs was flooded.
Train drivers were left stranded in Brighton as a result of the flooding and damage to signalling equipment at Patcham Tunnel, near Hassocks. There were also ongoing delays and congestion on First Great Western services in and out of Paddington, running at 40% capacity due to continued flooding at Maidenhead. Two people died in the extreme weather on Friday.
Minicab driver and mother-of-three Julie Sillitoe, 49, was killed when her Skoda Octavia car was hit by falling masonry near Holborn Tube.
James Swinstead, 85, an elderly passenger on a cruise ship in the English Channel, died when water crashed through windows on the boat. His widow Helen, from Colchester, claimed that the Marco Polo ship, which had been returning to Tilbury after a 42-night voyage, was “badly maintained”. But a spokesman for British operator Cruise and Maritime Voyages said yesterday that the 49-year-old vessel had been given the go-ahead to continue after police and port authority inspections.
It left Tilbury on Sunday night for a 14-night Norway and Northern Lights cruise.