Thank you to our Rochdale colleagues who rallied round when the store was flooded

We're really proud to be part of the Rochdale community – which is why so many of our colleagues wanted to help when the River Roch burst its banks and flooded the store.

Thanks to the quick actions of colleagues at our Rochdale store, including the group pictured here, the store was closed for less than a day when it was flooded after heavy rain caused the River Roch to flood in March.

The store's community champion Corynn Jekyll-Barrett said: "In our location we're surrounded by rivers, and we had so much heavy rain that the rivers rose and flooded quite a lot of our store.

"We had to close at 4.50pm on the Saturday but we were able to reopened by 2.30pm on the Sunday thanks to a massive colleague effort. Around 50 colleagues came in to help us clean up – quite a lot of them even came in even though they weren't down to work that day.

"Everyone pulled together to clear out the food that had been damaged. The yard at the back of our store suffered the most damage, as we are surrounded on three sides by the River Roch. The electrical plant room also flooded, meaning we had a power outage on the Saturday and Sunday morning.

"Our Asda Ace manager Margaret McAlpine organised a team to clear the yard, and then we all helped clean the store to get ready to trade again."

Store manager Chris Hart said: "It's great to lead a team that has such a positive attitude, even when faced with such a difficult situation.

"Everyone involved went above and beyond in order to make sure that all customers were calmly evacuated and the store was secured, before starting the massive job of recovering the store.

"The fact that the shop was open to trade and serving customers within 24 hours of the flooding is a real credit to all colleagues, and I'm extremely grateful to them for their commitment."