My name's Janet Home, and my property was at 54 Old Perth Road, Inverness.
My husband and I were out at a birthday party. When we came home there was exceptionally heavy rain, and thunder and lightning, which in fact, kept us wakened until something like 3 o'clock in the morning. After the thunder and lightning stopped, we eventually got to sleep and was wakened by a disturbance outside the house. We actually thought that this was revellers going home. However, having been wakened, I decided to go down the stairs, and there I discovered, at the bottom of the stairs, two feet of water.
We had no warning whatsoever. Although it was very heavy rain, there was no water at 3 o'clock in the morning, there was no water lying in big pools or anything on the road, the house was bone dry. We've lived there for over 30 years and we've never had any flooding whatsoever.
We had no phone and we don't have a mobile, so we had no telephone at all. We had no way of putting on the radio or the television, everything was blacked out. So there was nothing we could do until such time as neighbours starting congregating across the road and fortunately somebody put in a mobile phone to us, but we could do nothing except wait until such time as the water went down.
There's a Cul de Sac on Drakies Avenue and it was what I would imagine looking at Venice must look like, I mean it was just horrendous and a lot of the people are not back in their homes yet. One or two did manage to get back for Christmas but I think some of us it'll be nearer Easter.
I think the biggest impact on us is that every time we see heavy rain we think, is this going to happen again and we have got to get an assurance that drains are going to be maintained and kept clear. We've also got to find out what the position is with the Inverness Flood Prevention Scheme, they say there's money available from the Scottish Executive, so we've got to get this on the move and find out exactly what's going to happen.
