Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

THOUGH the sun has had his hat on lately, this summer is likely to go down as one of the wettest.

Last month was the soggiest June since 1879. But if you think if think that was damp, how about the time when East Lancashire was drenched by nigh on a whole month's rainfall in a single day?

It really was the Storm of the Century, so terrible and immense that experts reckon its like occurs only once every 180 years.

It rained so hard that houses fell down.

Part of the cataclysm came in the form of hailstones an inch in diameter that covered the ground six inches deep in places.

Yet, that Saturday - July 18, 1964 - the weathermen had actually promised sunshine - just the send-off thousands of holidaymakers were hoping for as one half of East Lancashire began its holiday fortnight that day.

But what they and the stay-at-homes got was record-breaking rain - and a flood disaster they would never forget.

The bare statistics of what were two rainstorms on the same day - the second far worse than the first - show that the official tally for heavy rainfall, of 0.8 inches in 24 hours, was swamped right across the region. At Nelson, 1.9 inches was recorded; the 1.88 inches that fell on Burnley was the highest in living memory. But at Mitchell's Reservoir, above Rising Bridge, a fantastic 3.1 inches came down - 2.5 between 9 am and 5 pm It meant that the area got almost all of the July average rainfall of fewer than four inches in just one day - millions and millions of gallons.

What terror those numbers meant.

In cut-off Haslingden, a tiny 79-year-old woman drowned, trapped in the front room of her son's home as a tremendous torrent of floodwater cascaded for half a mile from two overflowing mill lodges and through the back door of the house.

At Rising Bridge, a brook that was normally a trickle was turned into a raging river that ploughed downhill into the village. Lollipop lady Mrs May Shanks found the water lapping at the bottom of the stairs in her home in Northfield Road, but outside it was swirling by like nothing she had ever seen.

Now 84, she recalls: "The place looked like the open sea. There was a whole row of cottages down the road from me where the water was up past the window-bottoms. They had to be pulled down afterwards. There were dead sheep floating by - and a car."

That car, whose owner had only had it a week, was reduced to a useless wreck by the time it had been swept 300 yards from the village centre. But it was to contribute to even greater damage - and disaster - for the owner of a shop on nearby Blackburn Road and the couple living next door. For it helped to destroy their homes.

The vehicle was jammed into a culvert that took the brook beneath both premises. It, and the force of water, brought the two properties down. For the owner of the confectionery shop, Mr Will Parkes, it was a nightmare he had to come home to - in an emergency car dash from Bournemouth, where he and his wife had gone on holiday.

But for Mrs Ivy Hatton, who had lived next door since she was two, it was an even greater disaster. She and her late husband Sid lost everything.

"We got nothing for the house. Our insurance company wouldn't pay up. They said it was an act of God. But next door got paid by their insurance," 80-year-old Mrs Hatton said.

Folk in Rising Bridge and Haslingden began a collection for the homeless Hattons and the fund helped them put down a deposit on their new home in Haywood Road, Accrington.

"I'd gone shopping in Accrington and I remember watching the floodwater rising in Church Street, not knowing what I was going back to. Sid met me off the bus and he just said: 'We've lost the house'." In fact, Sid was lucky to be there. He escaped from the house minutes before it collapsed.

"He had just come home from work at Holland's up the road and had gone upstairs into the bathroom when he heard the walls crack. He just had time to dash downstairs and save the dog before the lot went," Mrs Hatton said.

Imagine, then, the horror of invalid Mrs Mary Turner, who could not get out of her home in Gannow Lane, Burnley, as floodwater rose up the the level of her mattress. Luckily, neighbours heard her faint cries and rescued her.

Another nightmare was that of nine-year-old Patrick Ellis, of Earby, who had sheltered in a doorway doorway opposite the Conservative Club. Crying for help, he was trapped by water that rose up to his chest while people marooned inside the club looked on helplessly with horror.

Three firemen roped themselves together in a bid to reach the boy but were kept back by the current. Eventually, they commandeered a heavy coal wagon that backed up through the flood to the doorway to rescue Patrick.

At Nelson, the waters flood forced residents of Thomas Street into the bedrooms of their flooded homes. Desperate people waded "neck high" to get into the houses.

At Hoddlesden, half a bungalow in Johnson New Road - the home of window cleaner Charles Slack, who was on holiday in the Isle of Man with his wife and children - disappeared into a pit as the torrent swept away the foundations. Down below in Darwen, scores of families in the Hannah Street, Cross Street, Carr Street, Blackburn Road and the aptly-named Watery Lane area were made temporarily homeless. The occupants of a cottage in Watery Lane had to be rescued by ladder from a back bedroom as thousands of tons of muddy water ploughed into their row, bringing down part of one unoccupied cottage.

The emergency services had more than 1,000 calls for help across East Lancashire. Rail links were cut for days.

In Accrington alone, nearly 300 homes were flooded. And as Bank Street, Rawtenstall, became a raging torrent, the town's fire station - deluged by calls for pumping equipment - was itself flooded to a depth of two feet.

In Burnley and Padiham, the damage bill was put at almost £3 million - equivalent to more than £33 million today. Huge damage was caused in the Waterfall area of Blackburn as it was hit by its fourth and worst flood in 27 years. More than 230 houses were flooded up to five feet deep as the angry River Darwen, having left a trail of destruction in the town of its name, surged into the district.

Smack in the path of the torrent, 63-year-old Mrs Theresa Alberts was sitting in the living room of her Princess Street home when the flood burst through the door. She was swept, up to the armpits, into her back yard and 30 yards down the back street. In all, 30 police raced to Waterfall to begin the evacuation of residents. Among them was Fred Elliott, then a 24-year-old constable, who remembers: "Our job was to get people out of their houses. All we could do was get them on to dry land and leave them there.

"The big problem was that a lot of them were old people and, with it being the first day of Blackburn holidays, a lot of their families had gone away and could not be contacted at first.

"The houses were absolutely terrible on the inside - just full of mud. I've never known rain as bad as that but I still can't understand how the river came up so quickly. I think there must have been a blockage downstream that stopped the water from getting away."

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