When a major emergency unfolds, the pictures on TV often only tell half the story. Through the lens of a camera, it’s hard to capture the range or scale of the very personal impact on each individual caught up in a disaster. Going door to door with our volunteers in the flood-hit village of Fishlake in South Yorkshire last week was a stark reminder of that.

For one man, who fled from his home in the middle of the night, it was bracing the flood waters again to retrieve his wife’s medicine. For a neighbour who’d stayed put, it was having to cope for days on end without a working toilet. Elsewhere, an 8-year-old feared his birthday would be forgotten.