大象传媒

"Water, water - anyone want some water?" was the cry going up in the terraced residential streets off Barton Street, Gloucester.

It was Thursday July 26 - six days since the deluge that triggered devastating floods across the county.

For more than 300,000 people whose homes had not flooded, there was hardship of a different kind - no running water after a major treatment plant near Tewkesbury was seriously damaged.

With nothing coming out of the taps, getting water for drinking, cooking, washing and flushing the loo involved a journey to a bowser or bottled water distribution point. And both were in short supply in the Barton and Tredworth area.

One of the organisers Ishmael Mehta explained:"They promised us bowsers and all we have seen is one. We organised this to help everyone in the community, not just Muslims. "

People pulling together

One resident, Jamaican-born Carlton Green, said: "Someone knocked on the door and said get your bucket and get out here.

"It's fantastic. It just goes to show what can be done, especially when you're in a crisis - people pulling together, that's the way it should be."

First the volunteers put out an appeal through mosques in the West Midlands for large water containers - knowing that many people use such items to bring holy water back from Mecca after making their haaj pilgrimage.

Mosque collected 拢2000

Mosques in Birmingham sent a consignment of containers already filled with tap water - and a Leicester mosque collected 拢2000 and arranged for 50,000 bottles of water to be driven to Gloucester in four trucks.

By the weekend around 150 volunteers were involved in some aspect of the delivery effort and 'grey' water for washing and flushing toilets was being brought in from sources including a well in Dymock.

And by Monday July 30 - a week after Severn Trent water supplies dried up - the group had also arranged an official bottled water distribution point at the mosque in Ryecroft Street, Gloucester.

The charity Islamic Relief also came to Gloucestershire's aid, distributing 5000 litres of water to hospitals, nursing homes and community centres.

The delivery came听 after linking up with Mahmoud Patel of the Barton and Tredworth Community Trust, which had previously helped the charity's relief efforts after disasters in other parts of the world including the Asian tsunami and earthquakes in India and Pakistan.

Jehangir Malik the acting UK manager of Islamic Relief who was in Darfur earlier the same week, said "I've been to disaster zones and to find myself doing water distribution in the UK 45 minutes from my home in Birmingham was a surreal feeling.

"When our trucks moved in on Wednesday we got the same response as we get in a place like Darfur with everyone cheering and welcoming you. The only difference was that the queues were a lot more orderly in the UK!"