‘I may not get on boat again after Shropshire canal collapse’

A man whose narrowboat home is precariously perched over the ledge of a huge hole in a canal says he does not know if he will ever get on a boat again.

Paul Stowe’s boat, the Pacemaker, almost fell victim to the giant hole on the Llangollen Canal in Whitchurch which opened up on Monday after an embankment collapsed.

Mr Stowe escaped barefoot with his wife, son, and two cats at about 04:10 GMT after he woke and heard rushing water “equivalent to the Niagara Falls”.

The Canal and River Trust (CRT) said an assessment of the embankment could take weeks, with repairs potentially taking months.

Unable to access their boat, Mr Stowe’s family have just the clothes on their backs and shoes bought from a nearby supermarket.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever moor in this area again, I’m not sure I’ll ever moor on an embankment again,” he said.

“I’ll be honest with you, it’s very debatable [that] I’ll ever want to go on a boat again.”

Initially thought to be caused by a sinkhole but later blamed by engineers on an “embankment failure”, the collapse caused water to rush into a nearby field and the canal bottom to fall away, leaving a trench.

“I don’t mind if it takes a month, or three months, or six months, I want [the CRT] to help secure my home,” said Mr Stowe. “Everything we own, everything we’ve got, is on that boat.”

He said they had no phones or credit cards, and added his birthday was on Christmas Day.

He now wants assurance from the CRT that his boat will be secured.

The charity told the BBC that recovering stricken boats was a priority.

The family have been boating for just 18 months, and said they loved the freedom and camaraderie in the community.

Mr Stowe, from Solihull, said that when they escaped, they saw the second of two boats fall into the hole.

“I can’t believe everyone got off the three boats with our lives intact to be honest, and that’s pure luck,” he added.

“We’ve been really supported very well by the local council and a canal boat company called the Cheshire Cat have offered us a boat to sit on… we stayed there last night… and just sobbed.

“I haven’t slept for 24 hours.”

Water has been lost from about 1.6km (0.6 miles) of the canal between Whitchurch and Grindley Brook, according to the CRT, which said its immediate task was to ensure boaters were supported and the area made safe.

West Midlands regional operations manager Richard Preston told BBC Radio Shropshire on Tuesday: “Assessments to the bank could take days if not weeks and [for the] reconstruction, we’re definitely talking several months before we can get the canal back open.”

A dam is also being built to withhold the water at the site.

Mr Preston said, in addition to two vessels in the trench and two at its edge, there were six to the north of the breach “listing over”.

“We need to try and get water back into at least some section of that canal so that we can refloat those boats,” he added.

Trust chief executive Campbell Robb said the organisation would “learn lots of lessons from what happened”.