A 62-YEAR-OLD woman was rescued from the River Wye after sitting on the roof of her car for 12 hours.

At 8pm on Monday night, she had driven down a lane near Whitebrook and got stuck in the floods and managed to crawl out on to the top of her car. It wasn’t until she was spotted by local resident Geoff Handley next morning that she was able to be rescued by him and his son Adam, with the help of Mark Smith and one other man."I had gone for a walk early that morning to look at the river and spotted this black thing poking out of the water, and then it moved!" said Geoff."I thought she was going to die, no-one knew she had been there" said Geoff. He shouted ’SOS’ to people standing on Bigsweir Bridge and two men came over to help.They dialled 999 and waited for a while before taking the decision to get her off the car and onto the bank as the water was still rising.“She looked dead to us and she was drifting in and out of consciousness,” said Geoff, who sent his son Adam up to the house to get blankets and some hot coffee as he and the other two kept rubbing her hands and hugging her to get her warm.The bank was densely wooded and was on a 45 degree angle and made it impossible to get her to safety, but when the fire appliance turned up, they didn’t have a boat to take her across the river to safety, so they waited another hour until SARA (Severn Area Rescue Association) arrived to carry her back to the other bank.The woman was taken to Gloucester Hospital and the last Geoff heard the woman from Lancashire was sitting up having a cup of tea.The River Wye saw record-breaking levels of water coming down from Hereford and the town was put on high alert on Monday evening, 17 February, with the closure of the Wye Bridge.The previous level of 6.48 metres, set in 2002, was smashed overnight by an unprecedented 7.2 metres of water which brought chaos to homes and streets, with landslides and fallen trees closing roads in the wake of Storm Dennis.Supplies of fresh drinking water were running short as the water treatment site at the Mayhill was flooded and power had been shut off. Welsh Water advised that those in vulnerable circumstances – such as the elderly, infirm or with young children – would be prioritised for bottled water.Welsh Water said: “We have limited storage of drinking water until we’re able to access and restart the treatment works. We are therefore asking customers in Monmouth Town, Osbaston, Wyesham, Manson, Overmonnow, The Kymin and Kings Fee to reduce their water use until further notice. Reducing water use now will ensure that we can restore full supplies as quickly as possible once we can access our site.”As a result, supplies of bottled water ran out at the Co-op at noon yesterday, Tuesday 18 February, and panic buying was seen in other shops as the threat became very real for many residents.Deliveries of drinking water by tanker were having trouble getting into the town itself with Welsh Water admitting it was proving “exceptionally difficult to move around the area”.Access to the town was severely restricted with a combination of road closures and flooding effectively shutting Monmouth from south-bound traffic.A landslide at the Buckholt and a closure of the A40 stopped vehicles from entering from Herefordshire and the Midlands.The Wye Bridge was closed by the police Monday night at 6.30pm through concerns over the integrity of the bridge leaving the only road access to Monmouth from the south.The road from Staunton was closed in an attempt to stop lorries having to turn around at the Wye Bridge. With the closure of the A466 and Wye Bridge, it meant that Wyesham was effectively shut off from the outside world.The Buckholt road was closed following a road traffic collision between two lorries.Storm Dennis had made its mark on Sunday 16 February when strong winds and high levels of rain fell on the saturated ground left in the wake of Storm Ciara and paved the way for the disaster that was to strike Monmouth this week.On Sunday, the River Monnow rose to its October 26 levels which saw the pretty hamlet of Skenfrith engulfed by flood waters for a second time.Simon and Anna Cook in Orchard Close had been in rented accommodation since November 2019 after everything water damaged had been stripped out of their house following the first flood. They had been looking to the builders moving in next week, but the second flood meant they were back to square one.As quickly as the River Monnow rose, it fell again. But the sting was in the tail of Storm Dennis that would see the worst of the chaos in Monmouth on Tuesday.Council officials warned pedestrians against trying to cross the A40 carriageway in Monmouth due to a flooded underpass, saying it was “incredibly dangerous”.Mountain rescue teams were called in to rescue an elderly man after he had been trapped in his home on the Redbrook Road due to rising river levels. They used a sledgehammer to break Peter Morgan’s back door open, before carrying him to the raft, where he was wrapped in blankets and taken to safety.