Local business owners have rallied to support families displaced by the Llangollen Canal disaster, offering their narrowboats as temporary homes.
Linda Edwards, who operates Cheshire Cat Narrowboat Holidays near the affected area, received an urgent request on Monday afternoon to assist those evacuated from their vessels.
“We had to drop everything and go and get boats ready to receive them,” she told the BBC.
“[We had to] put bedding on, make sure the heating was on, make sure everything was ready to welcome them… and we had the boats ready for half-past six.”
Ms Edwards’s company, based at Overwater Marina in Audlem in nearby Cheshire, is now housing two couples who were forced to abandon their floating homes.
She also confirmed the families could remain until Easter, as her holiday fleet is closed for the winter season.
David Ray, who runs Norbury Wharf on the Shropshire Union Canal near Newport, has similarly stepped forward with accommodation for those affected.
His fleet of six empty narrowboats is available to displaced residents during the festive period.
SHROPSHIRE FIRE & RESCUE
“I felt that we could just offer those empty boats to the people that need accommodation especially over the Christmas period,” Mr Ray added.
The generosity has extended beyond practical assistance, with a crowdfunding campaign established to help families who lost their homes, clothing and personal possessions. Donations have now surpassed £57,000.
The crisis began in the early hours of Monday when a 160-foot wide sinkhole suddenly opened on the Llangollen Canal in Whitchurch, Shropshire.
An artificial embankment that had stood for more than two centuries gave way, causing the waterway to collapse and sending vast quantities of water flooding into nearby fields.
The sinkhole opened in Whitchurch earlier this week
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SHROPSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICETwo narrowboats were captured on film toppling over as the ground beneath them disappeared, while a third vessel was left precariously hanging over the crater’s edge without capsizing.
At least six additional boats became stranded in the aftermath.
Emergency services declared a major incident, with the disaster threatening to leave families without homes just days before Christmas.
The Canal and River Trust has been working to restore water levels around the breach site and has constructed temporary dams, which should allow the stranded vessels to be refloated.
However, the cause of the embankment’s sudden failure remains unknown.
Julie Sharman, the trust’s chief operating officer, said on Tuesday: “At this point in time, we don’t have anything that is telling us, ‘Oh, it clearly was that’.
“Canals are old and they need a lot of care and maintenance. We inspect them regularly.”
Chief executive Campbell Robb acknowledged on Thursday that such large-scale breaches are uncommon but costly and complex to repair.
Officers were in attendance in the Chemistry area of Whitchurch
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GOOGLE MAPSFull restoration of the canal is expected to take several months.
Recalling this week’s sinkhole incident, local resident Paul Storey-Smith told GB News: “There was a huge breach on the Bridgewater Canal last year, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen boats at the bottom of the breach. It was quite scary to witness, to be honest.
“We’re about 90m away from where the sinkhole started. We got woke up at 4.20am this morning, and there was crashing on the boat because the boat was listing.
“We got off and a friend of ours told us that there was a sinkhole that had appeared and that there was a boat about to drop into it. And that when we got there, the boat was already in the bottom of this sinkhole.”