One year on: The leader
11:00am Saturday 19th July 2008
When Vic Allison’s boss went on holiday leaving him in charge, he was expecting business as usual.
But just a few hours into his first day at the helm, it began to rain heavily.
Soon a steady stream of bedraggled, scared refugees were knocking at the door asking for food and a bed for the night and hundreds more people were phoning up begging for help.
It was Friday, July 20, 2007 – the day of the Great July Flood – and, as Mr Allison was acting managing director of Wychavon District Council, this particular day the buck stopped with him.
He said: “For some reason on that Friday morning I’d gone for a meeting in Bewdley and I was a bit nervous about going because it was hammering down with rain.
“On my way back to Pershore it all took off. I had lots of calls on my mobile to say we are starting to get flooded, roads are being blocked and the situation deteriorated very rapidly.
“By lunchtime we had a disaster on our hands.”
Mr Allison just made it back to Pershore, the home of Wychavon’s Civic Centre, before the town was cut off as roads became impassable.
Although the council was expecting bad weather, the full extent of the situation took everyone by surprise.
He said: “It dawned on me how bad it was when I saw on the news helicopters airlifting people from roofs in Sedgeberrow.
“I thought, ‘this is really serious’.”
Fortunately, the council had an emergency plan and teams quickly swung into action, delivering sandbags to the most vulnerable, taking calls from the public and prioritising the elderly and disabled.
Mr Allison said: “Then people started to arrive here. The M5 was closed and people just drove away from the motorway.
“We suspect the first major settlement they hit was Pershore.”
The council soon faced housing more than 800 people at five rest centres hastily set up, including at the civic centre, the leisure centre and public hall in Evesham.
Although the council had some emergency provisions, airbeds and sleeping bags, one of Mr Allison’s first jobs was to buy up food from local supermarkets.
That night neither he, or many of the Wychavon staff, slept as the civic centre turned into a makeshift home from home.
He said: “People were sleeping in our council chamber and dogs were sleeping just outside the managing director’s office. It was quite bizarre.”
By Saturday, some people left as the roads reopened but many more remained for another night.
At the same time, the council moved into clean-up mode, collecting discarded water-damaged furniture, helping flooded businesses in Droitwich’s High Street and Pershore’s Port Street, trying to get drains cleared and offering advice.
The council also had to deal with its own flooded properties, including Pershore leisure centre and the Droitwich one-stop-shop.
However, Mr Allison, aged 41, who finally went home on Sunday morning, said much of what he did that weekend was instinctive.
He said: “You just react. In many respects you don’t need any training, you just do the obvious things.”
He recently discovered his efforts were to receive an MBE. He said: “It’s recognition but it’s not just for me, it’s for the whole of Wychavon, for all the staff and members.”