Alison Waring started to climb the railings of Doncaster's North Bridge. She'd had enough. Of living like a refugee. And of worrying where all the money was going to come from to replace everything she had lost.

Her home in Askern Road, Toll Bar, was virtually submerged under water when the neighbouring Ea Beck, swollen by the ceaseless June rain, burst its banks a year ago.

And now the disaster was about to take her life.

Depressed and at her wit's end, Alison had gone for a late-night walk... and ended up standing on the North Bridge.

Just as she decided to jump, a police car alerted by a passer-by screeched to a halt.

"I told them they should just let me go; that I'd failed my children and they would be better off without me.

"But there was a policewoman there who understood what I was going through because a relative of hers had been flooded out.

"They talked me away from the edge and I can't thank them enough."

Alison had to spend the night in cells at Doncaster Police Station. "They were worried if they let me go I'd try again.

"An officer sat with me through the night and talked me into a different frame of mind.

"The next morning I had to see a doctor and a psychiatric nurse before I was allowed home."

Her children, 17-year-old Sally and Ben, were waiting with open arms.

"I know now that if I'd committed suicide, they would have been devastated. I would have done far worse to them than the floods had done," says Alison. "But unless you've gone through what happened to us in Toll Bar, you can't really understand how low it brings you."

Alison and her kids had known the devastation was coming. They watched the water surrounding their home from two directions.

They were in the first boat out of Toll Bar. As it floated through the streets, through a landscape suddenly so unfamiliar, Alison didn't know when she would come back – or what she would find.

And one thought kept running through her head: Why didn't I get insurance?

"My mother had paid for contents insurance for 30 years without a single claim. I thought it was a waste of money," she says remorsefully.

Like so many Toll Bar families, Alison, Sally and Ben lived like refugees for almost a year.

They finally moved back into their Askern Road council home just two weeks ago.

For the first 10 days they slept on airbeds at the Salvation Army hostel, eating meals supplied by the council.

"There were 25 in our room. There were many tears, some in private, some shared," remembers Alison.

"We heard bogus stories of looting, and true reports that the water had risen to the height of the light fittings at houses on Askern Road.

"I couldn't bear to go back and look, but my son did.