Worst Floods In Modern History (UK)

I couldn't find anything on the floods on ATS that have hit the UK recently.
I'm in London, and the news is saying this part will probably be hit with floods similar to up north.

Millions of gallons of water could hit the west of the capital, bringing some of the worst flooding in living memory.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: "The Thames will reach its peak next week and more storms and rain could cause major problems."

Has this affected you?

People are panic buying and clearing the shelves.

I wonder what state London will be in next week, wet i should say!

This morning before work i caught a segment of the news, explaining that all this rain was due to a jet stream changing its direction, causing France, Spain, and the UK to have this unusual weather.
Climate change?

Links.

Links.







[edit on 23-7-2007 by Denied]

Last month i was stuck in a rescue centre in Sheffield due to the floods up there, it is scary how much damage the flooding can do.

There are places in the UK being affected by this which you would have thought never would have. Hundreds of thousands now without water and the situation is supposed to be getting worse.

Ah it's ok though, the goverment will now spend more on flood defences...just in the nick of time!

Plus Brown is looking to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in the UK to help with housing, and guess where they'll build them? On the flood plains again. These people are stupid at the highest level.

I know when i was up in Leeds last month and had managed to get out of the rescue centre, people in Leeds were angry because the city had scrapped plans for a £100 million flood defence system. This meant that a fair bit of the city got flooded.

They are going to spend billions clearing this little lot up, and the insurance companies will pay out just as much. Hmmm, i wonder where they'll recoup the money for all that from?

Good luck where you are Denied, hopefully the Thames will be ok and the city won't suffer too much.

CX.

People aren't panic buying, where have you seen this? Most reports seem to indicate a typical British response.

I live in Reading and my house is at risk of the coming surge. Bugger it, I say, not alot that can be done at the end of the day. Staying at my girlfriends tonight too, so I won't get wet feet when I have my corn flakes in the morning.

It's caused havoc though. I work for a large telco and one of our transmission sites is at the Waloham sub station in Gloucestershire.

We cannot get back up generators into the site due to the flooding and we're running on battery backup for the site. If it goes, a good portion of the BBC transmission network and other customer networks will go down too. We're trying to re-route, but telecoms will be hit hard in that area if she goes.

I have asked our higher up's if they can source a Chinook from the RAF via Gold Command to lift the gennie in, but not sure if we'll get it. Most are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, at the end of the day, there is little that can be done, with the scale of the flooding. We just have to deal with it and get on with life as much as we can.

EDIT: London won't get hit hard, with luck.

It's Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Gloucestershire that will take the brunt. I'll try and get some pics of the flooding we're having.

[edit on 23/7/07 by stumason]

Well I live on a hill - if I get flooded the rest of the country is really underwater

Seriously though - building o flood planes is just daft. In some parts of the world only the poor live on them in shanty towns, here it is desirable property of corse.

With all thease valuations of properties that is going on I reckon the govy should offer some sort of incentive for not tarmacing over every inch of garden for car parking etc. A big part of the problem is the water run off is much quicker now what with massive supermarket carparks etc.

Originally posted by stumason

I have asked our higher up's if they can source a Chinook from the RAF via Gold Command to lift the gennie in, but not sure if we'll get it. Most are in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[edit on 23/7/07 by stumason]

I think theres one or two hanging around at Middle Wallop for the next few weeks ???

I was in France several years ago when they had bad floods and that was terribel.

It's not just the UK that is suffering, the recent flooding of China really puts things in perspective, 152 people have died to date.

www.chinadaily.com.cn...

Originally posted by stumason
People aren't panic buying, where have you seen this? Most reports seem to indicate a typical British response.

In the area worst affected by the floodwater from the Severn and the Avon over the weekend, some homes were left without running water and supermarkets reported panic buying of bottled water and food, which is expected to create serious shortages for several days.

Panic buying following floods

I have to admit Stu, a few channels have been showing this today, Tewksbury was one place that was seen doing it, but it appears that many others are too.

It appeared to be mainly stocking up for water, but i can't say i blame them when there is so many houses losing thier clean water supply.

CX.

I'm so sorry you guys are experiencing this. We had serious floods here in 1995. We got really lucky however and experienced only 1 flood related death. We were also lucky that the dams on the Snake held and were able to handle the water. Our flooding was caused by a late heavy snow fall and freeze then sudden thaw.

Good Luck and you'll be in my prayers.

Im London also denied,

I know in surry the people where having to boil there water, so im just going to make sure i have enough clean safe water stocked up,

Im in a high area so hopefully wont be affected to bad, though saying that the other day there was small floods but nothing like the rest of the country,

Stay safe ukers Lets think ahead, make sure you have all meds ect ready to go in case you need to leave,

Hey thanks for all your replies and input.
There is rain on its way that's gonna hit us tomorrow, they say its not going to be as bad as predicted, we will see.

The rain that we had earlier last week, I've never seen so much rain come down in such a short time.

Any ATS'ers that are able to take pictures and post on here would be good, that's if you still got power!!.

I think even though this weather now seems bizarre, it will be come the norm, our climate is changing.

I just heard the damage done up north will run into 2-3 billion pounds, flood defences seems very cheap when compared to that.

[edit on 24-7-2007 by Denied]

The thing is, this has happened before, but when it did, the water just took its natural course and ran out into the flood plains, then slowly went down.

When idiots began building on flood plains they thought they could cheat nature, change watercourse, when of course you cant.
I also blame the people for buying those houses. The Solicitors searches would have proven they were built on flood plains yet they too thought they could cheat nature and the water wouldnt touch them, then they stand there in their waders and cry when nature acts naturally

Listening to the Jermey Vine show on radio 2 today. One woman rings up and says. " I havent got enough clean water, after washing ourselves and using it to flush the toilet there simply isnt enough" ????!!!!!!!!
WHAT?
She uses drinking water to fluch her bog when theres millions of gallons of it around her house ??
I despair....I really do.

What gets me is that so many folks caught-out by this event didn't do a thing to prepare for such an eventuality...even common-sense sense seems to have been washed-away in this 'deluge of biblical proportions'

Originally posted by Chorlton
..One woman rings up and says. " I havent got enough clean water...

Oh...and what is that stuff that you are standing waist-deep in?



[edit on 24-7-2007 by citizen smith]

I used to live in one of those newbuilds on the flood plain, right next to the mighty Thames no less. Some people are predicting a disaster of New Orleans type magnitude at some point in the future if the flood defences along the Thames aren't upgraded radically and a major surge hits the estuary. It does seem a little foolhardy to say the least building on natural flood plains. I can tell you from the many walks I took over on the marshes by the river that what's in place now seems a little too inadequate and I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

It's all very well saying don't build on flood plains, but when 15% of the country is flood plain and the vast majority is within a few miles of a river, where do we build homes?

When we are 600,000 house short of supply and people are forced to live in high price rental accommodation which isn't suitable to their needs (like me) because they cannot afford the £250,000+ needed to buy a place of their own, we have to build somewhere.

The problem isn't the building itself, it's relying on 150 year old drainage systems which aren't up to the job. With modern drainage systems and design, much of the flood water can be carried underneath developments, stored in water "attenuators" and released slowly, so that nowhere will flood.

One of the towns recently flooded just turned down a plan by the local water company to upgrade drainage which would most likely have mitigated the flood enough to stop all this.

The reason for the denial? It cost too much!

As for our EAM at Walham, it's all clear now and I understand the water has receeded by over 6 inches. No need for the Chinook now!

Ive always suggested that when building on a known flood plain, which IMHO should be a last resort after brownfields sites, they should build garage/utility room on the ground floor then the living accomodation on top of that.

But you aint never going to stop nature flooding onto a flood plain.

Originally posted by Denied

People are panic buying and clearing the shelves.

I did see on the news that one supermarket had a queue of over 200 people, mostly buying bottled water. When the store manager went outside some folk were selling the water to the rest of the tail end of the queue for £5. They'd paid £2 inside the shop.

Originally posted by stumason
It's all very well saying don't build on flood plains, but when 15% of the country is flood plain and the vast majority is within a few miles of a river, where do we build homes?

The planned 2million homes will have to be built as planned, but should be designed to take such flooding into account. Unfortunately, where developers such as Bovis/Redrow/etc are concerned, their buildings are designed with short-term profit and a minimal lifespan in mind and with little deviation from the standard 'noddy-box' blueprint.

Perhaps they should be taking their cues from the Dutch who are pioneers at aqua-tecture...

I live in Gloucestershire......I used to live right by the quay in Gloucester, the area that is currently underwater...and as said by stumason its the sewers thats the problem. That part of Gloucester floods Every time it rains hard. I was renting a ground floor flat, i had been there two weeks and the sky opened up and found myself in 3ft of water....sewerage water....it came up through the toilet, the bath....the floor in general....the fire service had to pump it out of the area....I lost everything I owned...all the mementos kept from my youth....so naturally I wanted to know if this could have been prevented....I found out that because the River Severn was unlikely to flood(the last time was about 60 years ago in this area) then it was not a flood risk....and even then because I was renting, the agency whom I rented the flat from was under no legal obligation to inform me of previous flooding....I had a years contract to fulfill before I could leave and it flooded again in this period....if the sewers had been able to cope with excess rain water the situation in Gloucester would be an awful lot better.

This, like the deadly heatwaves right now hitting Europe, and the dreaded drought plauging Australia is just further PROOF of climate change.
thankgod, Gordon Brown can atleast admit it.

Originally posted by Chorlton
Ive always suggested that when building on a known flood plain, which IMHO should be a last resort after brownfields sites, they should build garage/utility room on the ground floor then the living accomodation on top of that.

That's what they did here in Evesham with new riverside apartments - many of which were actually cut off by the flood waters on Saturday, but in most cases living accomodation stayed dry.

Some of my photos of the flooding in Evesham can be seen on my forum here:

www.ukweatherworld.co.uk...

There are further pictures showing how the situation has improved here:

www.ukweatherworld.co.uk...

Evesham was the first place to be badly affected - but also on of the first to dry out and things here are now mostly back to normal.

But you aint never going to stop nature flooding onto a flood plain.

Especially when you get the equivalent of 22% of your normal annual rainfall fall in 24 hours! (Which is what happened on Friday)