Edinburgh clean-up under way after flash flooding

  • 3 years   ago

A clean-up is under way in Edinburgh after storms caused flash flooding across the city.

Trains in and out of the capital were stopped and social media images showed numerous flooded streets, affecting homes, bars and businesses.

 

The recently-opened St James Quarter shopping centre was also hit.

Fire crews attended a number of incidents, including a bridge in Chesser, where they could be seen helping vehicles stuck in the water.

A couple were also pictured stuck at a bus stop on Roseburn Terrace after being caught up in the floodwater.

Sunday's stormy weather also caused a problem for shoppers in the brand new St James Quarter, which only opened last month.

Water could be seen dripping down windows and onto the balconies of several floors to ground level.

A spokeswoman for St James Quarter said: "Due to the severe weather in Edinburgh, parts of the St James Quarter Galleria were cordoned off for safety reasons.

"St James Quarter has been built to fully integrate with the city's streetscape and is not an enclosed building.

"Whilst St James Quarter has been designed as a naturally-ventilated environment and allows some rain to come into the galleria, the extent of water ingress in two sections was mainly caused by severe rainfall testing areas within the second phase of opening which are still under construction."

At 17:46 ScotRail tweeted to confirm that trains between Helensburgh and Edinburgh would instead only run as far as Bathgate for safety reasons.

Buses were arranged to run from Edinburgh to Glasgow while Network Rail workers set up pumps to take the water off railway lines.

Three restaurants, Five Guys, Burger King and Nando's at Fountain Park in Fountainbridge were closed on Sunday due to flooding. Cineworld at the other end of the complex was unaffected by the flooding.

Kayak search

Meanwhile, a search was carried out in the River Forth for two people in a kayak after the Coastguard received a 999 call from a passer-by who was concerned about them due to the poor weather conditions.

The Coastguard was called just before 17:15 on Sunday and carried out an extensive search, involving its helicopter from Prestwick, rescue teams from Fisherrow, Kinghorn and South Queensferry and RNLI lifeboats from Kinghorn and South Queensferry.

After nothing was found the search was called off at about 21:00 pending further information.

Source: BBC

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