Car garage owner left devastated by Storm Bert flooding as damage bill could reach £150,000

A business owner in Pontypridd says he could have suffered around £150,000 worth of damage in the aftermath of Storm Bert.

A major incident was declared in the Rhondda Cynon Taf region of south Wales on Sunday, with between 200 and 300 properties in the area affected by flooding.

Gareth Davies is the owner of Scorpion Automotive Solutions, where cars were almost completely submerged in water due to Storm Bert flooding at the weekend.

Gareth and his partner had checked CCTV footage the morning of Sunday, 24 November, to find six inches of water had entered the garage. 

Upon arriving at the premises, the water had already reached knee height.

Speaking to ITV Wales, he said: "I was trying to salvage as much as I could when I got here: the computers, the customers’ vehicles."

Gesturing to a vehicle, he said: "This vehicle was down on the floor, I had to try to pull that together up to knee height in water to try and save that vehicle. By the time I left here it was waist height and I was fighting to get out of the unit up to the dry patch.”

When asked about the cost to his business, Gareth said: "You’re probably looking at close to £100,000 worth of cars out there. With my computers and things in here, you’re looking at £20,000-30,000 worth of damage, plus the clean-up operation and the cost of all of that.

"We could be looking at £150,000 in total if I was to write all those cars off and replace everything that needs replacing in here all at once."

He has been running his business from the premises on Berw Road for around 18 months. Operating in a "flood risk" area, he says insurance will not "cover a penny" of the damages which flooding has caused at the weekend.

"With insurance down here, being a flood-risk, any insurance wouldn’t cover anything damaged by floods, and everything has been damaged by the floods. So, the insurance doesn’t cover a penny of it.”

The business owner said customers had been understanding but he may not feel the knock-on effects for some time.

"A lot of customers have been quite good about things, they understand they may have come in for just a timing belt but now it’s going to be three, four, five weeks before I even get to the point of knowing what’s wrong with it and whether or not its viable to repair it," he said.

"If it was your car and it has happened to you once, you’re going to take it to another garage next time, and then I will have lost the business that way. I’m not going to know what the knock on effect of that is for a few months yet.”

Adding to his distress is the complication of spilled oil mixing with the flood water.

He explained: "The water was one thing, but obviously being a garage, you have waste oil in here in containers. With the water coming up so high, it pushed the containers over, so you have about 200 to 250 litres of oil mixing in with that water. It has gone everywhere."

Due to the oil spill, the clean-up operation will not be a straightforward task, and Gareth has had to seek specialist advice on his next steps.

"A charity has come down here, they’re trying to help out now with environmental health and how we would go about doing it," he said.

"It isn’t a case of just taking everything out and jet washing it all down, because all that water has to go somewhere and it’ll end up going down the drain.”

Like others in the area, Gareth believes residents and business owners should have received more warning from officials regarding the severity of the storm.

He said: "There was a yellow warning, which I would naturally assume isn’t going to cause this much damage. If it’s a foot of water, it’s one thing cleaning that up, but to the extent it was… I wasn't expecting it, and I don’t think the other businesses on the estate were expecting it."

Rhondda Cynon Taf Council leader Andrew Morgan has said the weather was worse than forecast and he was “amazed” only a yellow weather warning had been issued by the Met Office.

The Met Office has said a full assessment of the forecast and warning strategy will take place over the coming days, as with any named storm.

Natural Resources Wales is also set to review the warnings issued to residents in Wales about the severity of Storm Bert.

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