A major air, land and underwater search is continuing for a man whose tractor was submerged by flood waters in a north-east river.
Emergency services, including a coastguard flood team and a rescue helicopter from RAF Lossiemouth are involved in the search at the Don Bridge over the River Don in Kintore, Aberdeenshire.
It is understood the man, thought to be local and in his eighties, was attempting to cross a flood plane to tend to some stranded cows when the incident occured.
The alert was raised at around 8.30am. It is not known if the man is still inside the vehicle.
Rescue teams say the water level is continuing to rise and have described the rescue operation as “complex”.
Inspector Neil Cameron of Grampian Police said: “At this point we cannot confirm where the driver is, obviously are efforts are focussed on locating the man.
“The weather is pretty bad, high water levels and quite awful conditions to work in and obviously our concern is mounting for him.”
Fire and Rescue services confirmed that two units were initially sent from Inverurie and Kintore and subsequently the force’s flood rescue team from Elgin were called in.
A spokesman for the Grampian Fire and Rescue said: “It’s an extremely complex operation. The river is rising as we speak. As far as we’re concerned we are still at the rescue stage until notified otherwise.”
Police are advising that diversions are currently in place to allow emergency services access.
Last updated: 22 October 2009, 14:58
The links provided allow you to bookmark this page into your favourite social media website. For users with JavaScript disabled copy and paste the URL from the address bar into your chosen social bookmarking site.