2025 got off to an fast start with an early morning request for assistance from Greater Manchester Police.  Around 400 people were trapped in flats at Meadow Mill in Stockport.  The building is close to the river and an unexpectedly high volume of overnight rain had meant that that river levels had risen to a record high.  It had overflowed the banks and flooded the building.  When we arrived, the ground floor of the building was under water along with most of the cars in the carpark. There was no power or fresh water supply to the building and it was expected that the services would not be restored for the next few days.

A full multi-agency response had been called, with Fire, Police, Ambulance, the local council, the RSPCA and ourselves at the scene.  Busses were provided to take the residents to an overnight holding centre for anyone who couldn’t find alternative accommodation.

As all the doorways were under water, an initial plan was devised ferry people out in boats, so we called for additional help from Glossop Mountain Rescue team and Bolton Mountain Rescue team.  Fortunately as we were waiting for the other teams to arrive, the water levels began to fall.  It was decided it would be safer to wait to see how far they dropped.  Once the levels had fallen to knee depth at the doorways, it was decided the safest option would be to assist everyone to evacuate the building on foot.

This was still a major effort, evacuating all the residents, and carrying their overnight bags plus a significant number of dogs and cats who needed to go with them.

The whole process was finally finished around 5pm, just after it had gone dark.  We hope the residents are able to get back in to their flats soon.  During the rescue, the team also received a call to assist a walker with a broken leg in Lyme Park (Callout #2 2025).  We released one of the Land Rovers we had on scene to meet up with the rest of the team members dealing with that job.

Once we had finished the evacuation, we checked in with our controller, who was working alongside the other emergency services at the main control room.  He asked if we were available to help with another on-going evacuation at the Britannia hotel in Didsbury.  The hotel was under water and there were around 500 people trapped.  It was a significant distance from the hotel to dry land, so Bolton Mountain Rescue team were already working along side the Fire service to evacuate the people in inflatable rescue rafts.  We were tasked with helping to evacuate residents from further buildings on Palatine road.  The water was waist deep in places and had a significant flow making it challenging to make progress.  We made multiple trips with our raft to ferry the residents out of the flood.  Between ourselves and Bolton team we moved around another thirty people out of four other buildings.  Once back on dry land they were offered temporary accommodation in a local Mosque, where local people had come together to offer food, blankets and dry clothes.

We finally recovered the last of the residents at around 10pm.  It had been a long day, but everyone was out the buildings they had been trapped in.  A great effort by all emergency services on the day.

Kinder Mountain Rescue Team is staffed by volunteers who give their time free of charge and is funded entirely by public donations.

https://www.justgiving.com/kmrt

– Time: 08:30

– Type: Flooding

– Location: Meadow Mill, Stockport & Palatine Road, Didsbury

– Team members: 10

– Duration: 13 hours

– Volunteer hours on this incident: 116 hours

– Total callout hours in 2025: 116 hours