Locals claim last week's floods created a media frenzy not witnessed there since it emerged in the early 1990s that serial killer Fred West had murdered up to 12 women in a house in the city.

Eamon McGurk, who lives part-time between Gloucester and Stabannon, Co Louth, has been impressed by people's resolve and upbeat nature in the wake of the floods.

"I'm a major shareholder in Gloucester City AFC and our stadium has been badly flooded . . . just before the start of the new season, " explained McGurk. His father emigrated from Newbliss, Co Monaghan to Gloucester a number of years ago.

"The water was just six inches below the top of the goalposts at its height, so it is the worst flooding we have ever seen. As our pitch was flooded in 1990, we have not been able to insure it since then, so we are going to have to try to raise the money to pay for the relief effort ourselves."

McGurk runs a construction company and owns a number of properties in Gloucester, including a block of offices in the city that have also been flooded. "We also run a number of petrol stations in the city and we have really noticed people panic-buying petrol, water and food over the last few days, " he added.

The McGurks, like so many Irish people living in Gloucester, are avid GAA fans. Nora Wade, from Waterville, Co Kerry, and her husband PJ, from Loughrea, Co Galway . . . an uncle of Galway hurler Kerrill Wade . . . said the local GAA was hit in a small way by the floods.

While the Wade family home escaped the flooding, their garage was submerged in water last weekend and all of the Gloucester GAA jerseys, which were in boxes on the garage floor, were soaked in smelly flood waters.

PJ Maher, originally from Roscrea, Co Tipperary, moved to Gloucester a number of years ago and now lives with his wife Ann and their family on a farm near the picturesque Cotswolds village of Leigh, between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, where the floods claimed two lives.

Maher's herd of pure-bred Charolais cattle, known as 'The Roscrea Herd', is renowned in farming circles across the UK and Ireland. Much of his farm, situated 1.5 miles from the river Severn, has been submerged under floodwaters and he counts himself lucky that he moved some of his herd to higher ground last weekend.

'Fields were a lake' "I couldn't believe it when I went out to look at the flood damage on Sunday . . . the fields where I had the cows had turned into a lake and a donkey belonging to a neighbouring farmer had drowned, " he said.

Many of the houses near Maher's lands are worth in excess of stg�1m and some of them have been destroyed. His next door neighbours' house has been flooded with waters up to three feet high. They spent last week trying to get a mobile home to live in as it will take up to a year before the house is repaired.

Less than a mile away, rows of cars line the side of a main road; they were abandoned by drivers last weekend and now their engines have seized up. A lorry carrying bottles of water, which delivers each household's daily ration of six bottles of water, passes shortly before the Sunday Tribune meets local man Chris Walker, who is wearing a wet-suit and coming down a side road in his rowing boat.

"We had up to five feet of flood water in our house, " Walker explains. "My house is about 600 years old so all we can do is wait until the flooding goes down and then light fires and open the windows to dry the house out."

Meanwhile, farmers like Maher are growing increasingly worried about their animals won't have enough drinking water in the immediate future and enough food for the winter. "I usually make 500 bales of silage each year and even though it is the end of July we still haven't made one yet this year, " he said.

"Even if the rain stops it will take two weeks before the floods go down. Then we will need more rain to wash the grass as it is covered in sewage, oil and other debris. After that we will need a few weeks of warm weather for the grass to grow before we can cut silage."

Speaking about their more immediate concerns, his wife Ann explained, "Each house is getting six bottles of water dropped to their door each day which is good, but there is no water being provided to feed animals. We have enough water to last a few days, but I don't know where we are going to get more water to feed the cattle."

PJ Maher was shocked to hear a radio report telling farmers that if they couldn't get water to their animals during the crisis, they should make arrangements to have them put down. Given that the Mahers sold one of their pedigree cattle for over stg�30,000 a few years ago, this is not an option that they will even consider.

The local water company, the Severn Trent Authority, along with the army and police, have undertaken a massive operation to provide drinking water for people across Gloucestershire. The car parks at the back of the grandstand at Cheltenham racecourse have been used as the main distribution centre for the water tanks and bottled water.

Bottled water is dropped each day to doorsteps in rural Gloucestershire while special water tanks or bowsers have been dropped at areas across Gloucester city and the surrounding towns and villages for people to come and fill their own supplies.

Talk of the bowsers dominated local radio airwaves last week with people complaining that they were not being filled up quickly enough. BBC Radio Gloucester even reported that arguments were developing where some opportunist residents were helping themselves to up to 60 bottles of water to sell on.

A married man rang in to the station in tears to say that his house in Gloucester had been flooded a few years ago and that he had acted as a rock of strength for his family.

This time around, he has no fight left andcannot cope with the flooding for a second time.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brady, an 81-year-old retired nurse who is originally from Mullagh, Co Cavan, was unable to leave his house at all. "We have a couple of feet of water at the end of our cul-de-sac so we are completely marooned, " he said. "We have no running water and we had no electricity a few days ago so we just have to sit tight and hope that things improve."

Lynn Hallihan, whose husband is from Cork, lives close to Tewkesbury, one of the worst hit areas in England. "There's eight to 10 feet of water on the farmland beside where we live, " she said. "None of us have any running water and we are being given six bottles of water a day. We have also been told that our electricity could go off at any stage so the circumstances are dire. I didn't realise how much water I used and how dependent we all are on running water until this happened."

Last week's flooding gave JP McManus's horse trainer and former Dawn Run jockey, Jonjo O'Neill, a scare as some of the paddocks on his world-famous Jackdaws Castle training centre were flooded. However, a member of staff at the centre . . . which is based deep in the Cotswolds near Cheltenham . . . said there had only been minor damage.

Portaloos like gold dust Close by in the historic town of Winchombe, a number of cars queued up to take advantage of a local farmer's generosity: he had erected a sign at his gateway offering less fortunate passers-by "Free Spring Water."

Back in Gloucester, staff at the Irish Centre answer calls every few minutes from various members, some of whom are elderly emigrants who left Ireland over 50 years ago. They ring in to see how their ex-patriate friends are coping with the disaster, while staff members are also busy on the phone trying to source Portaloos for the centre's bar. Portaloos were like gold dust in Gloucester last week but staff at the club were hopeful that one company could give them a unit that was used a few weeks ago at the Glastonbury music festival.

Some residents in Gloucester had water in their taps this weekend but they were warned not to drink it as it may be contaminated. As scare stories about salmonella and E. coli spread across the West Country as quick as the floods, it could be some time before life gets back to normal.