Hundreds evacuated after heavy rains hit UK

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A total of five people have lost their lives. Photo: EFE

Residents of Morpeth, Northumberland, were forced to evacuate their homes and seek shelter in a local school on Sunday after heavy rains battered north east Britain in one of the wettest August on record.

Royal Air Force footage taken from a helicopter in Northumberland on Sunday showed aerials of the flooded areas and rescue attempts.

"I feel like I'm despairing and I'm certainly not sleeping and eating right," local resident Jim Scott told a Sky News crew as he showed them the extent of the damage to his home.

Morpeth local councillor Andrew Tebbutt said "I don't ever want to see that happen to Morpeth again and there are measures which could be taken which would considerably alleviate the problem."

Elderly women were taken to King Edward VI's school and given shelter, as they faced the grim prospect of their homes being flooded by water.

"I haven't seen it, I haven't been back since we left," said one woman, adding "I wasn't going to come but they said the water would be running over. It was flooded inside there."

Another woman told Sky News everyone was waiting to hear if they could return to their homes. The north east is currently the most battered region. British media reports a total of five people have lost their lives in storm-related incidents across the UK.

A 17-year-old died after her car overturned and tumbled into a central Wales river during a major storm, British police said on Saturday.

Last summer in the UK was one of the wettest on record and flooding put many communities under water, causing billions of pounds of damage.