Tue 24 Jul 2007
How Britannia rues the waves
MICHAEL HOWIE THEY are scenes the likes of which the country has never before seen. Towns and villages stranded in the middle of newly formed lakes, houses under feet of floodwater, a huge relief operation to reach the hundreds of thousands left without electricity and fresh-water supplies. Livestock drowned, homes ruined, boats swept from their moorings, cherished photographs lost forever.
Thousands upon thousands of people are counting the cost of unprecedented havoc wreaked by severe floods across the southern shires of England. But this may be the summer weather we will all have to learn to live with.
The recent downpours may have been brought about by exceptional changes to the Gulf Stream, but the extreme rainfalls, arriving in England with such devastating impact on Friday, are something that climatologists acknowledge will occur more frequently as global warming kicks in.
Marion Percy's kitchen in Maidenhead was suddenly engulfed by 3ft-deep floodwater. "It came in so quickly - and we're two-and-a-half miles away from the river," she said. "We've been promised sandbags for weeks now and today we were promised sandbags two hours ago and they still haven't turned up."
Mrs Percy's criticism of the official response to the floods has been echoed by many. Professor Ian Cluckie, chairman of the national Flood-Risk Management Research Consortium, said that Herefordshire, Oxfordshire and the other regions hit by the floods should have been better prepared.
"The Met Office forecast was wonderful - no-one can blame them. But there will be embarrassment within the Environment Agency," he said. "They tried to set up temporary defences, but simply left it too late. When they did, they couldn't get through the roads because they were flooded."
Critics have been quick to round on government plans to build up to three million more new houses on flood plains, ridiculing a decision that they say will simply ensure misery for many more people.
Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, said: "We need to be aware that anywhere on a flood plain could flood at any time - winter or summer - and take remedial action now.
"Any plans to build new properties on flood plains, given current climate-change predictions and recent events, would be irresponsible in the extreme."
But according to Prof Cluckie, of Bristol University, a ban on such development is simply not an option. "We can't stop cities like London from expanding. What we have to do is get the flood-proofing right."
After all, he points out, everyone in the Netherlands lives on a flood plain, while 70 per cent of the population of Japan does. In Britain, only 10 per cent of people face the threat of bursting riverbanks.
Housing regulations, or the lack of them, is an important issue. "They are totally screwed up," said Prof Cluckie. Houses in flood plains should be wired from the ceiling down, he said. "Instead, they are built up from the skirting boards, which is crazy.
"They should be using tiles instead of plaster. These houses should have to be cleaned out when a flood hits, not completely rebuilt."
Prof Cluckie said the pressure to build more houses may be causing corners to be cut.
He said the current state of flood defences was "not right" and urged massive investment in sluices and effective barriers to help the country's flood plains cope when the rains do strike.
In Hull, where the majority of residents live below sea level, hundreds of millions of pounds of damage was caused in last month's flooding. Prof Cluckie said the devastation meant that more power needed to be given to Britain's cities to cope with the fallout from such extreme weather.
"There used to be a chief engineer in every city. Now I can't think of one that [has one]. There needs to be more co- ordination within cities to deal with this," he said.
"It's something Gordon Brown [the Prime Minister] has talked about and I think it's a very good idea."
While Scotland has escaped the recent severe floods, ministers have taken steps to ensure that communities at risk are better prepared.
The Executive has made £42 million available for local authorities in 2007-8 to support local flood-prevention and coast-protection programmes. Meanwhile, Mr Brown says UK spending on flood defences will increase from £600 million to £800 million.
Confirmed flood-prevention schemes that meet the Scottish administration's technical, environmental and economic criteria will be eligible for grant support at 80 per cent of costs.
Garry Pender, a professor in environmental engineering at Heriot-Watt University, praised the government for taking steps to tackle the problem - but said much more action was needed. "As the risk of flooding, and the value of people's homes increase, so does expenditure on flood-risk management."
The prospect of more flooding is something we are, it seems, all going to have to learn to live with.
COSTS SOARING AS VICTIMS SUFFER£2 billion
Estimated cost to insurance firms in the UK in what is likely to be their worst year ever.
5
Inches of rain (12.5cm) which fell in some parts of England on Friday alone.
10,000
Homes already flooded or at serious risk.
100
Royal Navy sailors drafted in to help in flood-hit Gloucestershire.
350,000
Homes without a water supply in Gloucestershire last night.
900
Water tankers called in by Severn Trent Water to provide clean water. A total of 240 are already in use.
1947
Last time floods reached disaster levels. The current floods are even worse.
45,000
Homes without power in the Gloucester area last night. That figure is expected to rise dramatically today.
500
The number of soldiers available in the entire UK for service in flood-hit areas.
1,500
Flood refugee capacity of the Kassam football stadium in Oxford.
200
Cattle rescued by the RSPCA from a flooded field in Whitham.
200,000
Further homes that would be cut off from mains power if a 1km emergency flood barrier erected around an electricity substation at Walham in Gloucester fails.
JET STREAM LINKED TO FLOODSIn 2006, the jet stream flowed north of the UK
THIS summer's deluge of rain has been blamed on an irregular Atlantic jet stream.
In a normal summer - if there is such a thing in Britain - the jet stream runs north of the UK, between the Northern Isles and Iceland.
This ribbon of fast-moving air in the upper atmosphere directs cold, wet weather north of the UK and allows high pressure to develop over the mainland, bringing settled, warm conditions to much of the country.
But this summer, the jet stream has been flowing further south and allowing low-pressure systems to sweep straight over the centre of the country.
Why the jet stream is behaving in this way is unclear, but many experts believe a climate phenomenon called La Niña is directing the show.
La Niña is an upsurge in cool water across central and eastern Pacific, and is the little sister to the better-known El Niño. La Niña occurs every six or seven years and climatologists are beginning to realise that its activity appears to have a bearing on Britain's weather, although the mechanics of this effect are not fully understood.
Meteorologists are reluctant to credit global warming with causing this summer's heavy rainfall.
Alan Campbell, a forecaster at the Met Office, said: "La Niña is not caused by global warming."
His colleague, Sancha Lancaster, added: "What we saw on Friday was a collision of low pressure over the east of Britain and extremely hot high pressure over the continent. This triggered a meteorological explosion that gave us torrential downpours in an extremely short time. Under climate change, we don't get this. We would get thunderstorms caused by heat rather than low pressure."
Forecasters are predicting respite for flood-ravaged areas of England for the rest of the summer.
But the bad news is conditions in Scotland may remain wetter than normal.
