DARTMOOR’S search and rescue teams — including the teams from Okehampton and Tavistock — answered the call to assist with the major flooding affecting swathes of the north of England.

Both the North Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team based in Okehampton and Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Tavistock left Devon for Yorkshire on Sunday (December 27) to assist with the rescue effort after huge amounts of rainfall saw communities swamped by rising waters.

Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Yorkshire have been battered by huge storms, including Storm Eva over the Christmas weekend and Storm Frank this week.

Both teams provided help in Selby and York, checking and evacuating homes in tandem with other teams from the South West.

Both teams were due to return to Devon on Tuesday evening ahead of predicted high rainfall in the South West at the end of this week.

Team leader for the North Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Dave Stoneman said: ‘It is a very large area that has been affected. The landscape is so flat that if defences are breached it affects huge areas. Some roads have been impassable though water does appear to be dropping [on Tuesday].

‘Some flood defences are becoming a hazard, like sandbags. They not only get in the way but when the water levels are dropping they can stop the water draining away.

‘It has been a huge response from all sorts of agencies. The South West teams have been deployed to the York area. While we are now in the recovery phase and preparing for more rain, we are giving the local teams a rest to relieve them so they can rest ahead of more potential rain from Storm Frank.

‘Mountain Rescue England and Wales has an inter-regional system where regions can call for help from other areas. North Yorkshire called for help and we put together the assets we could provide to help. It is a long way to go but the teams are in good spirits and keen to help however we can.

‘Once we are done here we will be getting ready for flooding in the South West region. Devon is due for heavy rainfall at the end of this week so it is a very fluid situation. We are watching where we are needed, including at home.’

Alan Packwood, from Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Tavistock was one of the members who went up to help with the flooding. He said on Tuesday that the situation was calming down but they were preparing for more flooding following rain due on Tuesday evening.

‘It’s calming down here now. We were brought up here really because of the concerns that the flood barriers would breach so we were on standby for that and had lots of specialist equipment in place just in case. Fortunately the barriers didn’t breach but if they had there would have been an extra 200 homes flooded in York itself alone.

‘The main issue has been that the emergency commun-ications system has crashed completely and power lines have been cut so there has been no way of contacting the emergency services. Our role has been to make sure roads are clear and to act as a point of contact for the emergency services.’

Alan said the members of the Tavistock team had been visiting the surrounding hamlets and farms to see if the roads were accessible and to see if there were emergency issues that hadn’t been dealt with because the communications sys-tem was down.

‘For some of the hamlets we are visiting, it may be the first contact they have had since the flood started, so we’re just making sure everyone is ok. Us being here also lets the local teams rest because they are expecting more flooding.’

He said the local people had been ‘brilliant’, offering food and support despite what they were going through.

‘We were based in a school and the local people brought so much food for us. The local support to our teams has been absolutely fantastic, we are all so grateful.’

Alan and the rest of the team, who are all volunteers with the rescue team and most of whom have full time jobs, were due to return to Devon on Tuesday evening.

‘As volunteers we are committed to a callout for 48 hours. Being volunteers we can’t commit any more time than that. It is hard to describe how big a job this has been for Mountain Rescue — there have been teams from all over the country come to help.’

Members from both teams made the trip as part of a regional response from Peninsula Mountain and Cave Rescue Association, which comprises Cornwall, the four Dartmoor teams, Devon Cave Rescue Organisation, Exmoor Search and Rescue Team and the Search and Rescue Dog Association.

The Met Office has said that parts of Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire had seen record levels of rainfall for December.

Yorkshire was among the places worst affected by the flooding. On Tuesday, there were 27 flood warnings in place across North Yorkshire, with six severe warnings for York itself.