IT’S now half a century since the worst floods and thunderstorms in living memory hit East Lancashire.

Torrential rain, lightning and hailstones the size of golf balls, brought down buildings, cut road and rail links and led to mass evacuation.

It was July, 1964 and the middle of the local wakes holidays, with families just returning from sunshine breaks or having to make a speedy dash home when told of major floods.

Rising Bridge was particularly badly hit when floodwater caused houses to collapse and families had to be rescued from their homes.

A police spokesman said electricity was leaking from the mains and gas was also seeping through the streets. A confectioner’s shop in Blackburn Road vanished in a roar of falling debris as river levels rose.

Owner Will Parkes, who had run his baker’s for 15 years, had to dash home from holiday in Bournemouth when the bad news came through and found a gaping hole where his property should be.

The picture throughout East Lancashire was one of homes flooded, roads under water, power cuts and firemen and police struggling to cope.

In Darwen, residents in Cross Street were cut off and a house in Sough Street partially collapsed.

In aptly named Watery Lane, water poured into the front of a row of cottages and out through the rear windows and one house partially collapsed.

Darwen market hall looked more like a swimming baths.

Floodwater from the surrounding moorland seeped through the mile-long Sough Tunnel and crumbled part of the inner wall on to the track.

Both ends were then blocked by mountains of earth and train services were disrupted for several days.

Said a British rail spokesman: “Communications between signal boxes and anything else you can think of, are all out of action.”

In Burnley centre, traffic came to a standstill in two feet of water, littered with debris, after the steep Manchester Road became a raging torrent, while at Crawshawbooth poultry cabins and sheds floated down the river.

Burnley fire brigade had more than 200 calls in just three hours and Healeywood Mill took the full force of a solid wall of water which crashed down the hillside.

In Nelson, residents in Thomas Street were forced to move upstairs and one housewife said: “I cannot get into the house, my furniture is floating about in the living room and water is neck high.”

An emergency flood committee was formed in Blackburn and a relief fund wet up in Accrington to deal with the hardship and havoc caused by the worst storms in decades.

Many mills throughout the area were hit, including India Mill in Darwen, where the floodwater was waist deep.

The town’s public baths were opened as an emergency centre and 40 people slept there overnight. St John’s school also opened for evacuated families, which was manned by St John Ambulance volunteers.

Rawtenstall was completely marooned with all roads awash and the local civil defence workers operated a control point at Crawshawbooth WMC.

Even the town’s fire station was flooded by to a depth of more than two feet and the first two engines to be called out were both trapped after making it only 400 yards along Burnley Road.