How repeated flooding has shaped one family across generations
Alister Heywood describes surviving three devastating floods, and how the trauma changed her, her parents, and her children.
Listen to Alister’s story:
In this story we hear from Alister Heywood, who shares her harrowing experience of living through three devastating floods - twice as a child, and again as a mother during the catastrophic 2007 floods in Hull. Alister recounts the vivid, terrifying moments when the waters rose, the windows shattered, and fire broke out in the chaos.
She reflects on the lasting psychological toll the floods have taken - not just on her, but across generations of her family. From her father’s breakdown after losing decades of work, to her mother’s allergic reaction to water, to her own trauma and the impact on her children, Alister paints a picture of how climate disaster leaves marks far deeper than waterlines on a wall.
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“My father was absolutely devastated because he lost his book. Stuff that he had been working on for 20 years or more. It had been on the point of publication and he hadn’t done any kind of copy. So he had a full nervous breakdown, and my mum ... became allergic to water. She would just break out in hives if she touched water at all … My dad never recovered … there was no bringing him back from that place, he was never the same again.”
“The windows upstairs were blown in. They basically shattered … there was this almighty bang, it was so loud, and it was the water forcing the front of the boiler off from outside, and then it just cascaded in … it was apocalyptic levels really. The water had risen up to the fuse box and set it alight … one of the couples that lived upstairs were quite elderly and the man never recovered from the idea that we were on fire. Apparently he woke up one night screaming that the place was on fire and he had a heart attack.”
“The water was at the level of the driver’s window, and it was coming through the glove box. I was shaking … my other half called and said cars were coming down the flooded streets and making waves, and that was coming in the house... and then I heard on the radio that somebody died in Hull – they got trapped in a drain.”
“I know it has been traumatic because every time it rains really heavily I get really quite stressed … I just think about those windows blowing in, and I feel very sad about my dad and his book and how much that blighted his life, and to an extent ours because he was not the same. [During the 2007 floods in Hull], my son Patrick asked “are we going to die?”, and I thought about how that could affect him for the rest of his life.”
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Stories From Round Our Way. Everyday conversations with people impacted by climate change.