I really feel for those affected by the recent rains. Having your neighbourhood and/or home and/or livelihood flooded goes quite some way beyond the mild inconvenience most of us have had to deal with of late. But accepting that in certain areas the powers that be (for whatever financial or other reasons) haven't been keeping up with the required maintenance (dredging etc), and in other areas upland water catchment areas* have been ignored or removed... Why is everyone surprised when geographical areas that are clearly flood plains are flooding? Yeah I know, wettest January in 250 years and all that, but it's a flood plain people. They will flood one day! Climate change is meaning the weather is swinging around a bit. When it's drier it could be VERY dry. When it's wet it could be VERY wet. For years I've looked at valley floors with their lush green FLAT farmland and river side FLAT fields mere inches above river level and wondered when they last flooded, and when they would next flood. So am I alone in thinking this was a 'disaster' waiting to happen? It was entirely predictable and should have been expected if not this year but sometime. * PS What happened to the phrase "Water catchment area"? Was it just a local thing to me from where I used to live? Big hilly wooded areas managed to catch water and stop downhill flooding?
It must be devastating to have your home ruined especially when you have just got on your feet and then it happens again. It all comes down to money you can't spend money on it might happen one day this country is broke, like you said wettest in 250 years. It's like when we got caught out by the snow this country doesn't spend much money on that stuff cause we normally have mild winters. In America they are much more prepared cause they know how bad it gets and spend a lot of money on it.
People are surprised because the type of flooding that is happening now hasn't happened in most peoples living memory, and when faced with an over populated country the pressures to build new houses on unsuitable land increases. Personally i don't think any amount of flood defenses, dredging or anything else would have prevented what we are seeing now.
I live in Cornwall but a few miles from the coast so thankfully not been flooded but it's only two-three miles from me, what has really angered so many people in areas like the Somerset levels is that the government and various agencies have taken so long to respond and help, Somerset and areas that are susceptible to flooding know that some flooding was unavoidable with the extreme weather but it could have been reduced with dredging etc, and as I said it's the lack of response from government that has infuriated people, some places have been under water for months and only now does anything get done! It's so typical that when some wealthier areas nearer London on the Thames get flooded as has recently happened they get the army in a few days, someone recently said, "When the effluent hits the affluent then things get done quickly".
I completely agree. To try and blame it on anything other than excessive rainfall is an exercise in frustrated futility. My thoughts go out to hose affected, but it will happen again, and again ad infinitum regardless of how much money is thrown at the issue. Those living in tornado alley accept the fact that there is a regular chance of damage and death, yet they still stoically rebuild every time. Also, what the actual ****:
Holding back the sea is different from trying to stop water falling from the sky, but i get the point you are trying to make, although are you willing to spend the kind of money needed to prevent a once in 200 year odd record breaking rain fall. We could protect people who decide to live around active volcano's but should we ? And its not like the Netherlands have never flooded, in fact they have lost entire settlements to flooding over the years and spend around $1.5 billion a year on flood defenses.
It's amazing how far the floods are spread now, it started off very localised but the chain-reaction is seemingly endless now and there's even more bad weather to come. I agree that in a lot of the locations there isn't anything that could have prevented the floods because of the sheer scale of the bad weather. Some defences and preparations could have reduced the severity in some locations (probably only marginally though), but in locations of major flood risks I don't think anything would have prepared the country enough. I ask the same question about all the people who are shocked about the houses they have less than 10m away from the sea walls getting hammered by the waves in a storm. Somewhat related... One of our flood resilience team sent us this little map prediction of the UK in the year 2100.
I have one thing to blame. Really. Urban sprawl. On this island, for some reason, everyone wants to live in a house, in some sort of half-paved country side. This means that cities are huge and that every little bit of country-side is filled with a commuter village. Go to an average city in the continent. People live in flats, within buildings. Flats bigger than your average house in Britain. The country-side is for farmers to grow crops, not to live in. I am a biker and I toured a good portion of Europe, there you have a village every 40-50km, here it's every 4-5 miles, so you are pootling along at 30mph till you reach Yorkshire. So when everybody has to have their 70sqm terraced house, and their own tiny garden, sometimes the only option is a flood plain.
There are some areas in risk of volcanos around here. The money spent "protecting" is more like telling people the best way to run away because there's no stopping it. I've never really understood why people are surprised when flood plains flood, or earthquakes hit fault lines, or what have you. It's far easier to be prepared at home than to hope you'll be protected from every possible storm or disaster. Prevention systems fail, or get overloaded, or simply aren't built to be robust enough for every possible disaster because it would cost too much money for a freak event.
It's too easy to criticise people for living on a flood plain. This country, and indeed most civilized countries, has actively intervened in the drainage and irrigation of its land since time immemorial. Though not often talked about, because most people never spend any time outside of the urban/suburban sprawl, there are countless highly intricate systems of drainage in the countryside (and major drainage systems in the cities). It is one of the unglamorous responsibilities of civic authorities to maintain these drainage systems, and it has always been so. The EA was infected with environmental activism (which I have nothing against) and neglected its mundane duties in favour of ever-popular eco schemes. http://insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/ is worth a read.
Actually as far as rivers are concerned, the two are intimately related. We know the rivers are prone to springing their banks when there is a lot of rain because we're below sea level, which kinda dictates the default levels of the rivers. Now of course you can not spend the money and cross your fingers that the next two centuries will be OK, or you can acknowledge that it's called flood plain for a reason and take appropriate measures. And I thought that the Dutch were cheap... Yup, and currently it waves hi at you with dry feet.
Who is actually surprised? The people living in it are probably feeling desperate and emotional - not a reliable source. Some might have stuck their head in the sand and lived in denial, but they won't really be surprised. The media just uses the situation to write whatever they want, regardless of how reflective it is of genuine opinion, it makes good news. The government will have been well aware that certain areas of the country are at risk. They will have conducted cost/benefit analysis, as well as looked at how many voters actually populate the risk areas, and made budgetary decisions accordingly.
Have you actually read any of that? It's so one-sided it's silly. There's no balance to it, just a few people, genuine or otherwise, mouthing off and providing no evidence. I'd sooner read the comments on the Daily Mail website than that rubbish.
I think at least party of it is that people want to feel safe, and they can't do that if they are conscious of the risks. Instead of realizing that things can go wrong wherever you live, people get into the comfortable mindset of "it can't happen here", and then are genuinely surprised when it does.
When you take the "It can't happen here" mentality and add a dose of "My insurance/government relief fund will bail me out," you pretty much sum up most of the construction on barrier islands here in the US. It gets really fun when the homeowner's insurance company insists that your house blew away in the wind, so the wind insurance company is responsible. The wind insurance company disagrees and is fairly confident that your house actually floated away in the flood waters, so the flood insurance company is responsible. You shake your head at the maddening fact that the wind insurance and flood insurance are provided by the same company, grow weary of fighting them for claims payments, then after a couple years you cut your losses and build inland.
