Many were left stranded in the Brightside Lane area of Sheffield

Here, some of those trapped by the rising water describe their experiences.

I have never seen anything like it. We are about 6ft or 7ft (1.8m to 2.1m) off the road itself and it is literally a river all round us - we are on an island.

We can see some activity - there are quite a lot of people on rooftops that look quite desperate and the rescue services are trying their best to take them off.

We are reasonably OK. It is a little bit scary I must say.

We never thought it would get to this height. But it has got to be at least 6ft.

We are hoping someone is going to bring some pizzas along and we are going to just sit it out and cross our fingers.

It is pretty scary out there, it is pretty fast-flowing.

I have lived in Sheffield all my life and I have never seen anything like this. It is absolutely horrendous.

This is a complete disaster. It is one of those things - you see it on TV, you just don't think you would be in one."

There is a complete flood here. The River Don which normally flows quite mildly next to us has now enveloped all this development.

There is a multi-acre development here, and Brightside Lane, the car park and the river are now as one. There are just a few bushes sticking out and a few cars bobbing about gaily in the car park.

I doubt the helicopter will rescue all of us as there must be many dozens of us, and it is taking several minutes for each person to be winched up.

All surrounding roads are completely flooded and from about midday cars started floating down Brightside Lane.

I would say two thirds of the development has some flooding on the lower floor. Luckily we were able to take some precautions and move some of our stock on to higher shelves.

Getting a bit desperate now - we've got no power, we've run out of food, so it's getting a bit critical.

They're on about air-lifting people out of the building, women and children, you can hear the helicopters flying about, all over the place.

The river burst its banks round about 1400 BST and just turned the road into a river and the river started coming up from the other side of the road - so it's just one continuous flow now.

We've sold all the sleeping bags. It looks like quite a few people are asking if it's all right to sleep in their cars in the car park.

The traffic all round is just solid, because if you go down to the main road it's a river.