When the floodwaters rose in Bentley in Doncaster on Friday last week, Mark Ibbertson and his teenage son Logan ventured out with their summer holiday dinghy and began to rescue people from their homes.

By the end of the day they had taken to safety more than 20 people, including babies and older people, and even a hedgehog.

Ibbertson, a local teacher, described the experience as surreal and said that when he started he did not anticipate being thrust into the role of chief rescuer.

The night before, some residents received an alert from the council saying they were at risk of flooding. On Friday morning after dropping his daughter off at school, Ibbertson went to check local river levels. He realised that Bentley would flood and headed there from his village ofSprotbrough.

Ibbertson had seen first-hand the devastation and subsequent lack of support offered to the community after floods in 2007, and he said he could not let that happen again.

“I knew what happened there in 2007 and I couldn’t just leave them,” he said. “They suffered so much and had very little support and we had to do something.”

When he arrived in Bentley he found people in desperate need of help. “There was some police here but everyone was just in a flap. I explained to the police officer that I was a kayak instructor and that I had a boat and they allowed me to help. There were people hanging out of their windows shouting for me to come and get them out. Everybody was just in shock – it was awful.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In his regular life Mark Ibbertson is a teacher at Netherwood Academy in Barnsley. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

He added: “We turned up first thing on Friday and we literally didn’t stop for a moment until around 4pm. We were both so cold, frozen, and our hands and feet had started to cramp, but we couldn’t stop. We just had to get people to safety and somewhere warm.

“A lot of them didn’t have any good footwear and would have got seriously ill if we hadn’t been there. There were disabled people, some with dementia, children, babies and lots of elderly people, some who were very fragile. I was having to carry people on my back – it was the only way we could get them out – and we just had to crack on and not stop until we had helped everyone we could.”

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Photographs of Ibbertson and his son rescuing residents were splashed across the national press and locals have called for the 49-year-old to be recognised for heroism.

“That is really lovely to hear and I do dread to think what would have happened if I had not been there,” he said. “It could have gone very wrong, especially for the older people. I’m just so relieved that I decided to go and have a look.”

But Ibbertson said he had already received his prize in the form of acclaim from pupils at his school, Netherwood Academy in Barnsley.

“It was unbelievable when I walked in. There were cheers and I can’t walk down the corridor without high fives. I’ve had Heroes boxes of chocolates. It’s so nice because a lot of the kids sometimes don’t realise that you are more than just their boring teacher. For many it’s been quite an eye-opener.”