Red Cross rescuers called to Belladrum festival floods

More than 40 Red Cross volunteers – including members of the swift water rescue team were called up for Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival yesterday as torrential rain washed out the festival site at Belladrum, Inverness-shire.

Parts of the Belladrum festival site, where several thousand people were camping, were under inches of water following constant downpours during Saturday night.

The alarm was raised in the early hours by organisers, who woke campers to warn them that areas of the site were starting to flood.

Red Cross volunteers and staff, who had been on first aid duty and running a shop at the festival, helped organisers turn one of the performance tents on higher ground into a rest and evacuation centre for flooded-out campers. By 5am, more than 60 people – mainly families with young children – were being cared for at the makeshift centre.

Emergency supplies of blankets and heaters were brought in from a Red Cross store at Dalcross, 22 miles away, to help bring some comfort to the stricken festival-goers.

Ian Rideout, Red Cross operations director for Northern Scotland, said, "The fields at Belladrum were already soaked after heavy rain on Thursday and Friday. A series of torrential showers overnight on Saturday and into Sunday morning saturated the ground, causing localised flooding."

"Our swift water rescue team are equipped with inflatable rafts to move people and equipment across water and mud to our evacuation tent. We had a field hospital on site, staffed by first aid volunteers, a doctor and two nurses."

The festival had ended on Saturday night and those still camping were heading home yesterday. Roads in the area were passable but many vehicles on the festival site were bogged down, stranding their owners.

As well as the volunteers, the Red Cross brought on site eight specially equipped Land Rovers and other specialist 4x4 emergency response vehicles to help get festival goers off site.

The festival which sold out eight weeks in advance, saw Scottish acts Texas, and Deacon Blue headline. Also appearing over the weekend on Friday and Saturday were Guillemots, Kassidy, Echo & The Bunnymen, Frank Turner, Newton Faulkner, Ed Sheeran, Eli Paperboy Reid, Anna Calvi, Admiral Fallow, Easy Star All Stars, Teddy Thomson , Little Comets, Dry The River, MC Xander, Young Rebel Set, Roddy Woomble, 3 Daft Monkeys, Roddy Hart & The Lonesome Fire, Emile Sande, Ben Howard, The Amphetameanies, Lucy Rose, CW Stoneking and His Primitive Horn Orchestra, The Xcerts, Skerryvore, Saint Saviour Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Iain MacLaughlin & The Outsiders, The Raghu Dixit Project, and more. For the full details to-date, click here.

Tickets were priced at £90 for an adult weekend ticket which included parking and camping. Children aged 12 and under are able to attend for free.

eFestivals will be bringing you photos and reviews from the festival, once we've dried out.

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