TORRENTIAL rain washed out roads and caused chaos across York and North Yorkshire as half of the county's average September rainfall fell in 12 hours.

Drivers battled with flash floods and flood warnings were issued in Scarborough and Whitby as 22mm of rain fell between 6am and 6pm yesterday.

Shocked York householders were left with a smelly clean-up job when hundreds of gallons of sewage flushed into their gardens in Danebury Drive, Acomb.

And a York builder's merchant has said an investigation will be held into how building material came to be washed into the River Foss.

Elsewhere, firefighters in East Yorkshire were kept busy with a string of minor weather-related incidents including flooding to property in Hull.

Today, forecasters at the PA WeatherCentre said North Yorkshire has a chance to recover with dry and bright weather for the rest of the week.

The newly-built garden of one Acomb property was covered with sewage for the second time in two years as the owners stood at the back door, trying to hold back the filthy tide with a garden hose.

Home cleaning company owner Valerie Wright, 55, said: "It stinks". She watched with her husband Brian, 54, as up to two feet of sewage covered her garden in a matter of minutes.

The couple suffered a similar flood two years ago and work to rebuild the garden, which cost £1,000, had only recently been completed.

Mrs Wright blames a nearby pumping station and has called on Yorkshire Water to take action to stop it happening again.

Neighbour Joseph Murray, 65, said he could hear water rushing underneath the bedroom floor of his bungalow.

Mr Murray, and his wife Doris, 62, said they were left with "nothing but a gungy swimming pool" at the back of his home.

A spokeswoman for Yorkshire Water apologised to the residents of Danebury Drive and said a power dip, possibly caused by an electrical storm, caused the pumps to fail.

She added that workers, who had mounted a clean-up operation throughout the night, would continue their work today.

A City of York Council spokesman said Environmental Health officers had not been notified of the problem.

Meanwhile hours of heavy rain caused run-off tanks at JH Walker and Co, in Foss Islands Road, to overflow, carrying white sediment into the River Foss.

Assistant manager Kevin Mitchell said an investigation would be held to find out why fine limestone dust was carried into the river.

The Environment Agency had taken samples of run-off water from the site after heavy rain in August, he said, but had not returned any results.

A spokeswoman for the Environment Agency, said the discharge was not believed to have a "significant" effect on aquatic life.

But officers have asked the company to take steps to make sure it is not an ongoing problem.

The agency is also investigating the Danebury Drive flood.

Four people died in the south of England in suspected weather-related accidents.

Two people were killed and a third is critically ill after a crash in Surrey, and earlier, the county's police found a motorcyclist dead on a roadside.

Police were unsure if the man was struck by another vehicle or was blown off his bike.

A man died when his Jaguar car was crushed by a camper van in an accident near Lewes, Sussex.

Police believed the camper van was blown on top of the Jaguar.

France was even harder hit by the weather.

Troops were rushed to the stricken Gard region and helicopters were sent to help rescue workers battling floods and torrential rains that killed at least 12 people and forced more than 1,000 others to evacuate their homes.

Violent rainstorms caused rivers to burst their banks, closed roads, flooded a hospital and cut electricity in some 40,000 homes, officials said.

Updated: 11:44 Tuesday, September 10, 2002