Flood hit businesses in the Lochavullin and Mill Lane area of Oban are counting the costs of the deluge – already running into hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of wrecked equipment and lost trade.
While Tesco remained open, its fuel station closed and home deliveries were suspended. M&S only shut its doors on Sunday.
The biggest impact of all was painfully felt by smaller traders and services who lease their premises from Argyll and Bute Council.
Oban Hire & Supplies Ltd owner David Chandler was in town to see the destruction for himself.
Mr Chandler’s early guess is that the flood will cost his store about £100,000. Because the business cannot get insurance cover because of flooding risk, it will have to settle the bill itself.
“Where are any flood defences? This is going to drive businesses away from Oban. You’ve got to ask the question: Why would we stay? When we got flooded last year we had to pay out about £40,000 of our own money. Basically, it means for the last five and a half years we’ve been working for nothing – it’s heartbreaking. Independent businesses like us do not have deep pockets. We have asked the council for help but they tell us there is no hardship fund. BID4Oban can keep banging the drum to try and get the council to take action to protect our businesses but no one will listen, I’ll be writing to our MP.”
BID4Oban chief executive Andrew Spence is calling for contingency plans.
“It’s the worst the water has ever come up. As a town and a business community we need to look at, once everything is cleared up, what are the resilience plans for the future. What is the contingency next time? We get more advance notice now than ever before.”
He added: “God forbid it was worse and inundated the supermarkets. It could happen next time.”
By Tuesday, staff at LMS Auto Services in Crannog Lane were into day two of the clean-up operation – but it could have been worse.
Thanks to Oban Times reporter Sandy Neil who called the fire service after spotting smoke and hearing popping sounds coming from the garage on Sunday morning, a blaze was avoided. Water had got into the office area and workshop, damaging all the electrics.
Earlier this week the garage was still closed and without electricity.
A LMS spokesperson said: “We’re waiting for tradespeople to come. We can’t open until we get power restored. We usually do about nine MOTs a day and then there’s all the services and repairs we do. It’s costing us a fortune. We’ve got damaged equipment and a lot of cleaning up still to do.
“Flooding here is an ongoing issue that we bring up with the council. I sent three emails to different council departments on Friday on the issue, by the next day we were at least two-foot under water. The council can’t be leasing ground that is not fit for purpose.
“We have seven people employed here, that’s seven households relying on livelihoods from here.”
Calum Munro said the weekend’s flooding was the worst he has seen in the 32 years his garage has traded from Mill Lane. Dirty water even got into filing cabinets, MOT kit was destroyed and replacements have been ordered which will bring in a hefty bill.
He said: “I’m past the point of asking the council for help when we flood, we never get anything back from them.”
Roddy’s Garage next door estimates tens of thousands of pounds were lost, although they did manage to stay open by “adapting and overcoming” the challenge.