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The next time the floods come we’ve
got to be better prepared
Valerie Elliott
Consumer Editor, The Times
Filed 19 Dec 07
©Valerie Elliott
This article was originally
published in The Times, 18th December 07.
It is reproduced here by kind permission of its author and of the
newspaper.
People living in flood-risk homes are being urged to evoke the
wartime spirit by keeping their own emergency kit.
The threat of flooding in England is as great
as that of terrorism or a flu pandemic, and planning for it should
be treated as a priority, a review of last summer’s floods
concludes.
The advice that households should go on a war
footing to tackle floods were given yesterday by Sir Michael Pitt,
head of the independent review of the chaos that was brought to
many parts of the country by floods this year and which led to more
than £3 billion in insurance claims, the biggest single claims
event in British history.
It followed the wettest May-to-June period since
records began in 1766 and left 13 dead and 48,000 homes and 7,000
businesses underwater in the South West, the Midlands, Yorkshire
and Humberside.
In an interim report published yesterday, Sir
Michael made it clear that Britain was not as well prepared as it
should have been. Among a series of urgent recommendations was the
need to stockpile and requisition vital supplies such as rescue
boats, sand-bags, food and drinking water.
He said that the flood-proofing of emergency services, electricity
and gas sub-stations, water and sewerage treatment centres must
be prioritised.
Buildings earmarked for evacuation and rest centres
in such incidents also needed to be resilient to flooding. Some
were underwater this summer.
He suggested that planning permission should be
required before front gardens could be concreted over to provide
off-street parking or for new garden sheds and patios. The run-off
from these hard-standings was seen as a significant problem in the
groundwater flooding that particularly affected Hull and Sheffield.
Flood awareness should also be part of the home-buying
process and people should know in advance if the prospective house
were at risk.
It should be included in the new Home Information
Packs that must now be compiled by homeowners before they can sell
their property.
Every home should also keep its emergency flood
kit. A sealed plastic box should be stored as high as possible with
essential documents, emergency contact numbers and items of sentimental
value.
Other suggested essentials are a torch, a battery
or wind-up radio, mobile phone, rubber gloves, wet wipes or antibacterial
hand gel, first aid kit and blankets.
Many will also be tempted to stockpile bottled
water last recommended by the Government when it feared the Millennium
bug in 2000. People were horrified by the misery for 350,000 residents
in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury who lost their water supply
for 17 days after a treatment works flooded.
Power and water supplies were lost, railway lines,
eight motorways and many other roads were closed and large parts
of five counties and four cities were brought to a standstill.
According to the report, it was the biggest loss of critical infrastructure
since the Second World War.
Sir Michael, a civil engineer and chairman of
the South West Strategic Health Authority, also called for better
weather forecasting and improved modelling techniques to identify
precise locations at high risk.
He also wants to see more take-up of insurance
in flood-risk areas and for householders to register with the Environment
Agency for flood alerts, texts or phone calls.
He was surprised by the way some people assumed
they would not be affected. He did not seek to apportion blame for
the general unpreparedness.
But MPs are scathing about the performance of
the Environment Agency. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said
that despite a funding increase of 40 per cent, flood defences in
England had not markedly improved.
It questioned whether the extra £200 million
pledged to be spent on flooding by 2010 to 2011 would be used properly.
The allocation is to go up from £600 million to £800
million.
©Valerie Elliott
Further reading recommended by Land-Care
The Pitt Review - Learning lessons from
the 2007 floods (2007) Click
Here to View pdf
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