Six floods in five years: life in Yorkshire's Calder valley

In homes metres away from the river, residents say they are constantly on alert

Kelly Ramsden hardly sleeps a wink when heavy rain is forecast. Last Saturday, when the army was deployed to Yorkshire's Calder Valley to build flood defences in preparation for Storm Dennis, the 39-year-old was up half the night fretting.

She doesn't have to wait for flood sirens to know if she needs to switch from slippers to wellies. The window of her attic bedroom looks up towards the moors and she can gauge how soggy her kitchen will be by the amount of water rushing down the hillside towards the cobbled alley at the back of her house. From her living room, she can guess whether the River Calder, speeding along just 15 metres away behind a waist-high wall, is going to cause problems downstream in Hebden Bridge or Mytholmroyd.