TORRENTIAL rain and flash floods brought parts of East Lancashire to a standstill yesterday.

Some roads were flooded by more than a metre-and-a-half of water and emergency services were bracing themselves for more problems as forecasters warned that it would continue to rain heavily over the weekend.

Rush hour drivers on the Grane Road in Haslingden found themselves stuck in tailbacks as a lake of water formed in a dip in the road at 4.30pm yesterday.

A spokesman at Rawtenstall fire station said: "It was quite bad all over, but especially in St Crispin Way, Haslingden, where it meets Grane Road. We had to unblock the drains because the water was a metre-and-a-half deep."

Firefighters spent more than 10 hours pumping water away from a converted barn in Haslingden Old Road, Oswaldtwistle.

Surface water from the fields behind the property, near the Duckworth Hall pub, started pouring into the kitchen at about 3.30pm yesterday .

Sub-officer Keith Cunliffe, from Accrington Fire Brigade, said: "The drainage was under an awful lot of pressure and it just couldn't cope."

The garden of the Plough pub, Queen Street, Great Harwood, was submerged under about 10 inches of water as the stream which runs behind the pub overflowed.

Landlord Bob Smith said: "The garden is 50 feet long and it is under several inches of water. It started at about 4.30pm and it was completely flooded within an hour."

Weather forecasters said the torrential rain would continue throughout the weekend.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.