Mark, Lisa and two-year-old Magdalen Collins, back in Coleham, Shrewsbury, after being rescued from floods in Southern France

A Shropshire family today spoke of their “sheer terror” after they had to be airlifted to safety when their campsite was hit by flash floods that killed at least 20 people in France.

Mark and Lisa Collins and daughter Magdalen, two, spent at least three hours on the roof of their caravan waiting to be rescued at a campsite in southern France after the floods began to devastate the country.

The family, from Coleham, Shrewsbury, lost virtually all the belongings they took with them, including passports, wallets and money, in the floods, which hit France last Tuesday.

Today Mrs Collins, a 43-year-old acupuncturist, said she and husband Mark, a 51-year-old manager of the Garden Buildings Centre in Shrewsbury, were relieved to be alive after returning home on Friday.

She said: “We obviously escaped with our lives. We’ve lost a lot of stuff but at the end of the day we’ve come home and our house is intact and we have our home and lives.

Worse

“Most of the people in the refuge centre we were taken to had ended up there because their homes have been flooded and they have lost everything. At least we could walk away from it.”

The family were at a campsite at Etoile d’Argens near Frejus. On the day of the floods they went to Nice by train and had to wait at the station after the weather took a turn for the worse before catching a train back and then using a hire car to drive back to the campsite.

“We struggled to get back to the caravan because the roads were flooded, but we just thought it was a flash flood and was surface water and it never occurred to us that the river would break its banks,” said Mrs Collins.

She said the family went to sleep at about 11pm but she was awoken by a bang, and feared Magdalen had fallen out of bed. She got out to check on her daughter and discovered water knee-deep alongside their bed.

The family watched a fridge freezer and their belongings floating around but as they saw other caravans becoming unstable they moved to the roof. After three hours they were winched off by a helicopter and flown to a rescue centre.

Mrs Collins added: “We have a strong faith and we did a lot of praying. My acupuncture also probably helped and allowed us to stay calm. But the one thing I couldn’t bear was the thought of returning without Magdalen. We were extremely lucky.”

By John Kirk

Rescue workers looking for survivors last week in the Naturby river after the deadly floods in Draguignan, southern France.