It was a year ago today that I arrived to find the village of South Church rising from a sheet of water.

Emergency services and soldiers were helping to evacuate residents, including the elderly from two nursing homes.

It was clear that the community, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, would be in turmoil for a long time.

Heavy rain during the night had caused chaos, as the River Gaunless broke its banks.

As the morning went by, community centres were opened and the WRVS helped provide for those forced from their homes by the deluge.

The school closed and it was months before all the roads were re-opened. But, by early evening, the waters had fallen and there was little trace of what had gone before.

A year later, the community is far from recovered. Some have yet to return to their homes.

Families - such as Kevin and Susan Rogers and their two children, Jamie, 12, and Victoria, two - have spent months living in caravans.

Although he is a firefighter, nothing Mr Rogers had dealt with professionally had been on the scale of what happened a year ago.

While the family waited upstairs in their St Andrews Road home, he helped neighbours salvage what they could.

After a "horrendous" first couple of months, the family became more used to living in a caravan, but it was not until two days before Christmas that they were able to return to their home.

"Living in a caravan is great for a couple of weeks, but for a few months it is a little bit different," said Mr Rogers.

"It did affect the children. My daughter was forever in hospital when she banged herself or cut herself, in case of infection."

Although furniture and other items have been replaced with the help of insurance, there are many things that can never be regained.

"We have lost a lot of things you could never replace - photographs of my grandmother and father who have died, wedding photographs, christenings."

For the Rogers, there is still much to do - work builders must return to complete. It is the same for George and Betty Hewitt, who live a few doors away.

"We had about 6ft of water in our house, three under and three above the floorboards," said Mr Hewitt, a Wear Valley district councillor.

They lived in a caravan on their neighbour's driveway for seven months after the floods.

Coun Hewitt was woken by a call at 4.30am from a neighbour who told him she was being flooded. Thinking it was a repeat of a previous sewage problem, he looked out of the window to see the street under about 6in of water.

He got further shocks as he went to warn other residents.

"I got about halfway down towards the church and there was a torrent that went up from about 6in to your waist. It was a torrent of water - it was massive, there were stones, bins, flowerpots . . ."

Nobody was prepared for such an event, and the villagers still fear a repeat, despite a flood warning service, said Coun Hewitt.

Mr Rogers said the problems caused by the flooding, even if not repeated, will hit the residents for a long time to come.

"At the end of the day, we are the ones who have paid for it with bigger insurance premiums," he said. "House prices have gone down - nobody is going to want to move here."