Tyndale: Big Bang hype sent millions of pounds down a black hole

Sep 15 2008

IF there was an award for The Nation’s Favourite Flood Story (and there probably will be one day) it would go to the Baxter family of Chester Le Street, County Durham.

Their extraordinary near-tragedy happened when little Leona Baxter was out in the park with her father, Mark, a sergeant in the RAF.

Mr Baxter, 34, allowed his three year-old daughter to run off and play in a stretch of flooded park and the tot promptly fell into an open drain, the cover of which had been lifted by the storm.

She was then sucked 200 feet along a pipe before being flung into the River Wear.

Her life was saved because her father ran to the drain exit and managed to pull her out of the river. He has of course been described as a hero.

And Leona has been called the luckiest girl alive. Hardly.

Would anyone with a grain of sense allow a toddler to wander off into murky floodwater?

In terms of the idiot father she’s ended up with, I don’t think Leon Baxter has been very lucky at all.