Leaving my car in front of the office I hoped it would not float away. My Senior Care Manager met me at the door. 'I hope you have your wellies in the boot. We’re taking a boat down Fleurs Place which has been flooded. Jump into my car and we’ll take all the people living there to the community centre.'
We plunged through the water and knocked on each door. Another colleague was in a boat with frail old people clutching their belongings. He shouted to us, 'Take the other side of the road, the RAF are coming to help too.'
One by one, we helped the folk to the community centre. Some had walking difficulties and needed zimmer frames, sticks and wheelchairs. The little one-bedroomed houses of Fleurs Place were under a foot of water and the rain kept coming.
We heard the buzz of a helicopter above. Soon the RAF personnel pushed into each house and rescued as many people as they could.
My Manager said to me, 'Stay at the centre and help comfort everyone. Try to get as many details as possible and alert their relatives and make sure they have a bed for tonight somewhere.'
I did as he said, accompanying a lady who was clearly hallucinating to the extreme. An unkempt dog of a similar vintage stayed by her side. She latched on to me.
'I have no one,' she said, her voice shaky and sad. 'I’m alone in the world except for Bernie here.' Bernie licked her hand comfortingly at the mention of his name.
'Don’t worry,' I said. 'Tonight you will have a warm bed and someone to care for you. You’ve had a terrible shock.'
Already, the alert had gone to all the homes in Forres. The police had gone around residential homes, sheltered housing complexes and everywhere that had additional volunteers to assist with this tragedy, not in a war-torn zone but right here on our doorstep.
Soon, the RAF declared that all the houses had been evacuated and the occupants sat around in the community centre or were taken to relatives who comforted them.
One lady cried out, 'My wedding photos; the photos of the bairns - I saw them float away in the water. All my stuff - I have money hidden away somewhere.' I tried to comfort her, photos and money were unimportant - she was safe.
'Don’t worry, the rain will go away eventually and we’ll go back and see what we can save.'
'Will we though? They’ll be ruined.I didn’t think to grab them when the soldiers came and carried me out of my house. And the door - they battered down the door before I could find the key.'
'But they saved you, that’s the important thing. We’ll get a new door when this is over.'
My Manager reappeared and allocated people to me and all the other staff from around the area who had dropped everything and came over to Forres.
'You can have this lady,' he said to me. 'She seems to have struck up a rapport with you. And this gentleman here, who seems to have a bottle of spirit in his pocket. The lady with the dog too, she’ll be a hard one to place. Not too many people are keen on old dogs.'
Volunteers with rooms to spare came forward willingly to take in as many folk as they could.
The lady who had lost her photographs was probably the easiest to place. The manager of the local residential home hugged her like a long lost friend and immediately found her a bed in the establishment. I hugged her goodbye and soon she was tucking into lunch with the other residents and regaling them with rescue stories. 'The RAF are wonderful! One young man just lifted me and put me into a boat and out of the street. Later, I sat in one of the people carriers. It was just like being in a war.'
She settled but not the little chap, who by this time, was quite merry. He declared he had been “made redundant”.
'Nae use to anyone now,' he declared. 'I know who will make you welcome,' I said. I took him to a sheltered housing complex which had recently been built and the staff took him in with open arms. 'Don’t you worry, he’ll be fed, clothed and and will have a fine place of his own.' I trusted the staff to be as good as their word but when it was time to go back home, I was alerted that he was found dead by police, having committed suicide.
The woman with the dog was chatting away to her “voices” when I got back to her. However, the GP in charge of her phoned the local psychiatric hospital and explained what had happened. They took her away as an emergency and said she would be there for some time. After they had corrected her medication she was returned to her home and monitored by the community psychiatric nurse. The two became firm friends and the nurse even provided a place of respite for her dog when necessary.
This was an unexpected adventure but one in which I felt I had helped as part of a team to save the lives of people in an extremely dangerous and vulnerable situation.