Pupils collect harvest gifts for flood victims (From York Press)
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Pupils collect harvest gifts for flood victims
8:14am Thursday 11th October 2012 in News
By Mark Stead, mark.stead@thepress.co.uk
Sutton-upon-Derwent School pupils with City Mills residents and Councillor Tracey Simpson-Laing. The school handed out harvest festival goods to those affected by last month’s floods
PUPILS have done their bit to help residents left cut off by rising floodwaters in York.
Youngsters at Sutton-upon-Derwent Primary School were preparing for their annual harvest festival collection when they saw coverage of how people living in the City Mills sheltered housing scheme in the city centre were affected by severe flooding two weeks ago.
They decided to collect “long-life” foodstuffs such as tinned food and pasta and donate the gifts to the residents.
Their offerings were presented yesterday by pupils, aged between nine and 11, as they got the chance to see how high the water had reached.
The floods left those living at the Skeldergate building, run by City of York Council, depending on firefighters and a dinghy to get in and out of their homes after a custom-built wheelchair-accessible walkway was left out of action because of the rising River Ouse.
On September 27, the water peaked at 5.06m above its summer levels. “The pupils always collect local produce for the harvest festival and choose where to donate it to, and they decided it should go to the City Mills residents after they saw the flooding on the news,” said headteacher Angela Ekers.
