Swansea residents face clean-up after flash flooding
A care home worker has spoken of her despair at a second clean-up in eight months following flash floods in Swansea.
Tina Nicholls is among residents in the Birchgrove and Glais areas hit on Tuesday.
Fire crews pumped flood water from five homes after a culvert was blocked.
Swansea Council said culverts were only inspected on Monday but filled up rapidly with debris washed up from rivers during heavy rain.
Mrs Nicholls was about to redecorate following flooding last November.
"It was only yesterday we bought wooden floors and other stuff; we'd been waiting since that time," said Mrs Nicholls, who was at work when she heard her house had been flooded again.
"We were promised it wouldn't happen again, as it was an act of God, and by God it's happened again.
"There was water everywhere. I'm just devastated. There was water, muck, floating pots - I didn't know where to look.
"To be honest with you I wanted to sit on the floor and cry.
"That's our summer and our holidays gone again. What can I say?
"We were going to start work a week on Monday but that's not going to happen now. We'll have at least two weeks of the de-humidifiers coming back in."
Swansea Council said it had been "working around the clock" to deal with emergency calls.
"The flooding is the result of a number of culverts becoming blocked during the heavy rainfall experienced in the last 48 hours," said a spokesman.
"These culverts were previously clear of debris on Monday when they were inspected by officers.
"The heavy rainfall resulted in huge volumes of water flowing into the culverts along with debris washed up from river beds and embankments, causing them to become blocked very quickly.
"We are doing everything we can to assist residents affected by the floods and have removed debris from the blocked culverts."
Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service requested a boat to assess the damage but it was not needed.
Watch manager David Fox said that when crews arrived in Birchgrove, the water was thigh-high.
"We started pumping water out and tried diverting it into the drains so it would subside," he said.
"We had three pumps in attendance... and we also assessed the properties that we couldn't gain access to make sure all residents were safe and not in any great danger.
"There was a local builder who had access to a JCB and he offered his services.
"I assessed it was safe for him to use his JCB on the culvert and gave him the go ahead, and once we did that it quickly subsided."
Council workers cleared the remaining debris from the road.
Properties in Neath were also affected.
Flooding was also reported on the A470 in Powys between the B4358 at Newbridge-on-Wye and the A44 at Llangurig.
The A5152 Grosvenor Road in Wrexham was also affected.