Local hero Mike Sohal delivers 400 meals to keep community afloat during devastating floods

Mike Sohal of Nisa Local Dallam has gone above and beyond for his community after severe floods swept through Dallam on New Year’s Day leaving dozens of homes without power and forcing people to evacuate.

After witnessing and hearing about the devastation across his local village, Mike spent the second day of the year delivering 100 free meals prepared by Warrington Gurdawar to families affected by the floods.

Six days later, he has now delivered over 400 hot meals to those in need and is also offering the option for people to collect meals from his store.

He told Convenience Store that when Dallam is hit with floods, the whole village turns into an island surrounded by water: “For people who are stuck, they cannot get in and out of the area because there’s water waist high because one side we have a railway and the other side a canal. And that’s the canal that’s flooded. So people have lost their kitchens and have no food or hot water because electricity was cut off. Some of them had no electricity for up to 48 hours.”

Nisa’s Making a Difference Locally charity has donated £1000 each to Mike and two other Nisa retailers - Kuldeep Dhillon and Tapan Chotai - to help support those impacted by the floods. “All three of us retailers will come together to help our communities and donate £3000 so that they can get the basics sorted as soon as they can and so they can move back into their houses.

I know it’s not much to fix everything, and people might get paid insurance money, but that’s a long-term solution. Right now, its about the short-term aspirations and that’s why we got involved to provide support,” he said.

”Thank you to both of you, you’re amazing people and go above and beyond for the community, absolute superstars” - wrote one Facebook user

To illustrate the severity of the floods, Mike shared that last week one of his regular customers, who they deliver food to, had not called. One of his colleagues went to check on him and discovered that the elderly man had injured his arm and had been stuck in his wheelchair for three hours.

“We went over because you see this is the problem, there’s no in or out access. His career couldn’t come and sort out his medications or put him to bed or anything like that. So then my colleague and myself put him to bed. But the thing with elderly is that they’re not all on social media. He didn’t even know what was going on, he was still thinking his career was going to come,” he said.

Mike explained that the flood waters have now gone down, but the situation remains desperate as families evacuated from their homes “are now scattered all over the place”.

According to one Facebook user, Nisa Local Dallam has stepped up and provided “more than the emergency services”.