The army was helping York prepare for a second wave of flooding last night as gales and storms forced hundreds more from their homes and brought the death toll in storm-battered Britain and Ireland to 12. As storms hit Herefordshire a tree fell on a car killing two passengers and leaving the driver seriously injured, while a separate incident in Devon claimed the life of a 13-year-old cyclist.
Eighteen hours of heavy rain from Sunday night over the Pennines and North Yorkshire Moors, meanwhile, had again taken York to the "knife edge", with police voicing alarm about the state of the city's defences with the River Ouse running "at levels not seen" for 400 years.
By last night the Environment Agency had 36 severe flood warnings in place, as government ministers promised to speed up local authority compensation claims, and fought off suggestions they had ignored warnings of the need to increase spending on flood defences issued five months ago.
Hundreds of homes were evacuated and a number of villages virtually marooned in North Wales, as the army helped residents in York place up to 1,000 sandbags an hour against warnings that the Ouse will peak again this afternoon. Chief Supt Gary Barnett said they faced "an unprecedented situation" and that the emergency operation would continue over the next few days at least. The Environment Agency's Kay Schofield suggested the Ouse would peak this afternoon at 5.2 metres.
As fresh floods swept huge swaths of England and Wales, crippling rail services across the country and making many roads impassable, residents of Uckfield in East Sussex were on the verge of evacuation amid fears of a repetition of the flood three weeks ago when the River Uck rose 16 feet.
In Dorchester about 100 people were evacuated as the River Frome reached its highest levels ever, and more than 40 residents had to be evacuated after an old people's home in Crawley, West Sussex, was flooded. Residents in a cul-de-sac cut off by a landslide in Gilwern, near Abergavenny, had to improvise with a series of ladders to escape from their homes. One inventive council introduced a tractor and trailer service between the market towns of Norton and Malton, North Yorks, which were cut off by the River Derwent.
The Countryside Minister, Mr Elliot Morley, told MPs yesterday the government had asked the Environment Agency for a full report on the lessons to be learned from the widespread flooding across England and Wales. But speaking on BBC Radio last night he echoed Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's rejection of reports the government was warned five months ago that flood defence spending would need to be increased by at least 50 per cent.
Mr Morley said the report, warning that without extra money chaos of the kind currently being experienced would prove inevitable, had been addressing projected investment requirements over the next 50 years.