My colleague Brian's account of saving A/V equipment

After a night of hurricane force winds and heavy rain this past Friday, Carlisle experienced the worst flooding it has seen in nearly 200 years.I received a phone call from Ian, a fellow OMer, at 4:20 Saturday morning asking me if I could come down to the garage where we store our AV equipment including our broadcast truck, bus, and other AV conference equipment because it was being flooded. When Isaac and I got there the police had the road blocked off because about 1'-2' of water was rushing across the road. The police allowed us to park. Ian already had pulled the bus out of the garage. Thankfully, because our AV team was preparing to leave on Tuesday for a conference in Germany, they already had most of the equipment loaded in the vehicles. We were able to drive the bus and truck to higher ground.

When Isaac and I got back to the garage the water had risen to over 1' in the garage and about 2' outside in the street. We had to wade throught the freezing water to get in. We then moved as much equipment as we could, but a lot of it was already ruined.As Isaac and I were coming out of the garage and crossing the street I fell face first off the curb (which was underwater of course) and into the street, twisting my ankle. The water was freezing and I was completely soaked. I hobbled back to the car thinking the injury wasn't too bad. But actually, I couldn't feel it at all because our feet had been in freezing water for over an hour. After warming up, I found I had a golfball sized lump on my ankle and couldn't move it.All of Carlisle lost power Saturday morning shortly after the flooding began. Our power finally came back on this afternoon (Monday), but there are still homes without power.

Many homes and businesses have been flooded with anywhere between 4' and 5' of water. At least 4 of our team member's homes have been flooded, but they chose to stay on their upstairs floors instead of being evacuated, which involved going through chest-deep freezing water.Thankfully, our OM office has been untouched, as was our house because we live on higher ground. Please pray for our team members and the clean-up that still needs to be done. Also, the weather forecast predicts more heavy rain Tuesday evening with winds gusting up to 70 - 90 mph. If you want to see more pictures of the flood, go to www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria