Storm batters Britain, widespread flooding and power outages

Carlisle resident John Donaldson had to be rescued from his home as the flood water came in.

Police are reporting a 90-year-old man in London, which was experiencing extremely heavy winds, was blown into the side of a moving bus.

Sir James Bevan, the new chief executive of the Environment Agency, promised he will review his organisation’s response to the floods.

More than 1,000 people have been evacuated and about 55,000 homes are without power due to Storm Desmond, the BBC reports.

On Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron held a meeting of the government’s emergency team COBRA, which is tasked with responding to national crises.

The Environment Agency had flood alerts in place for the rivers Aire, Calder and Spen yesterday and trains were delayed by the bad weather.

She said data from a rain gauge in Honister, Cumbria, suggested a record amount of rain had fallen in the area over the 24-hour period between Friday and Saturday evening.

Major road closures are also still in place and there are disruptions across transport networks.

A fundraising campaign set up on Sunday for people affected by the floods had raised more than a quarter of a million pounds by Monday morning.

Speaking from Carlisle, Superintendent Mark Pannone, of Cumbria Constabulary, said: “A lot of the county are trying to get back to normality but we still have the ongoing incident in Carlisle where we have about 2,500 properties in Carlisle flooded”.

The worst of the storm responsible for the flooding, named “Desmond” by the Met office, had passed according to forecasters but more wet weather was expected in coming days.

“In particular, we are carefully monitoring the situation in Carlisle and York where river levels have not yet reached their peak”.

He said it was “absolutely devastating”, adding: “The flood defences that were built here in 2012 haven’t been breached, they have been over-topped”.

It shows the helicopter using the searchlight on the flooded house, after the flood water rose too high for them to escape, as one of the family members is brought up.

Dave Gilbert from Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue, who is at the scene, said: “We’ve rescued hundreds of people from their homes and taken them to safety”.