A family business has had to shut temporarily after a "river" of water flooded their premises. When one of the managers of a car repair business in Swansea came to work at 6am last Friday, she was horrified to see a stream of water flowing out. Unable to open the automatic doors of the office, Marie Thomas managed to enter the building through another door and saw the entire building was flooded with water up to her ankles.
"It was literally like a river out the front. I was just blown away, I couldn't get my head around it," the 47-year-old said. FixAuto in Peniel Green, Llansamlet, includes a block of offices and three car workshops. On Friday, December 2 the building flooded from front to back and Marie and her staff have no idea what had caused it. There was no electric in the building and thousands of pounds of office equipment has been damaged with expensive hard drives submerged in water.
With her father and owner of the business, Terry, at home recovering from a hip operation, Marie waited for her brother, nephew and partner who were due to arrive for their shifts. The family called Welsh Water who arrived a couple of hours later and began to search for the cause of the devastating floods but left at 8pm still unaware of why their business had been devastated. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Although Marie and her family are still searching for answers, it is thought a pipe may have burst on site - but the problem is still being investigated. The volume repair business, which employs around 60 staff and has bookings up until February 2023, has been shut temporarily with a skeleton staff team working to complete urgent car repairs which were due to be finished this week.
Marie works with her partner, father, two nephews and her son and said this disaster has affected the whole family. Her father has owned the business for 55 years, working in the same building in Llansamlet since it opened. Daughter Marie has worked there for 30 years and cannot believe what has happened to her tight-knit family.
"We're a close family, our children all work with us. It's our living. We're devastated, we've been there a lifetime," she said. "We don't know when we'll be back up and running again. We're just in limbo at the minute, it's early days. We're just trying to come to terms with it."
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