Nowhere to hide from this toll of misery

WATCHING people cleaning up their homes and businesses after they’ve been flooded has become an all too familiar sight on TV news bulletins in recent years.

Most of us feel a pang of sympathy and thank our lucky stars that it hasn’t happened to us, but one of the worrying aspects of the floods that have swept across large parts of the UK over the past nine months, is that many of those affected had never been flooded before and don’t live near a river. There are numerous stories of people having to open their front and back doors to let water pour through their house in order to prevent it building up and causing even greater damage.

One of the most dramatic images was of five houses left hanging over a sheer drop following a landslip in Whitby in November. The row of cottages on Aelfleda Terrace had been part of the seaside town’s skyline since the days of Queen Victoria, but then torrential rain caused patios and a slab of rock and mud the size of a minibus to slide down the steep slope, sweeping away the gardens and 150 years of history.

It was a reminder that even those seemingly far removed from any kind of flood risk can be affected by severe weather. The question of how we can reduce the impact of flooding and other extreme weather events has come into sharp focus in recent years following catastrophic floods in 2000, 2007, 2009 and again this year.

In 2004, a government study warned that the cost of damage from flooding and coastal erosion in the UK could rise by 20 times over the next century. The Foresight Flood and Coastal Defence Project involved 60 experts in climate change, engineering and economics, and concluded that flooding “would increase substantially” by the 2080s.

Professor Edward Evans was science team leader for the project, which formed the information base of the new Government strategy for flood risk management. He believes the Government needs to spend around £1bn a year on flood defences and warning systems for England and Wales. “After the floods in 2007 they started to do that but as result of the cuts that has been scaled back,” he says.

“The Environment Agency has done some excellent work and we are much better prepared for flooding now than we were in 2000, or even in 2007. But something like 40 to 50 per cent of flood damage claims aren’t the result of flooding on river and coastal plains, it’s urban areas that aren’t necessarily near a river and have been flooded by surface water running off fields or from inadequate drainage,” he says.

“One of the problems is a lot of old towns and villages were historically built around the banks of rivers, Yorkshire is full of places like that, and obviously that is a problem if they keep on flooding.”

It would cost too much money to build flood defences for all the small rivers and watercourses, but he says there are still ways of mitigating the impact of climate change. “We need to sort out the deal between the Government and the insurance companies and we perhaps need a campaign to encourage people to protect their property by installing steel gates on their front doors.”

But that still leaves the problem of Government funding. “The problem is that it seems to come down to do we want more schools and hospitals, or more flood defences?”

In the past five years the Environment Agency has spent around £47m on flood defences in the North East and regional flood risk manager, Phil Younge, says this money has made a difference.

He says nearly a thousand properties at risk of flooding were protected in Yorkshire last summer. “In 2007 we had a lot more people flooded but the good news is the investment put in place has worked and this time it’s stopped a lot of people flooding. The bad news is this is happening more frequently.”

And 2012 has been particularly challenging. “It has been an exceptional year in terms of rainfall and it’s been fairly persistent and consistent. In the past you would have floods and the rain would go away and allow the ground to dry out, but this year the ground has remained saturated since June and any subsequent rainfall just adds 
to it.”

He says that flooding can have a devastating impact. “Unless you’ve been flooded or seen it then you might not appreciate the effect it can have. It’s not clean water, it’s dirty and often mixed with rubbish and sewage. If you get burgled, it feels like an invasion of your privacy and it’s a similar thing if you get flooded because all the things you’ve worked hard for can be ruined at a stroke.”

The Environment Agency, along with the National Flood Forum, works closely with local authorities to help support those who have been flooded. In Yorkshire there are around 30 flood warden groups who act as the Environment Agency’s eyes and ears in communities at risk of flooding, and they help ensure that local residents, particularly the elderly and most vulnerable, are prepared.

Younge says we are likely to face periods of extreme weather in the future. “We are probably going to see greater variations and we need to be able to cope. When we have periods of drought we need to be careful about how we use water and at times of floods we need to understand the risks and be prepared. We have a flood warning system in place in many flood risk areas, in places like the Calder Valley, York and Leeds, where people receive a phone call or text warning them in advance that there’s a possibility of flooding.”

It’s been estimated that flooding and flood management cost the UK over £2bn each year. Professor Nigel Wright, from the school of civil engineering at Leeds University, says some of the costs of are relatively simple to work out. “If the centre of Leeds floods then buildings in the city will be impacted. We get the headline cost of damage and how much the insurance claims are likely to be, but if Leeds is flooded then the city’s train station is likely to be out of action. This means people can’t get to work and it costs them and their employers.”

In other words it has a knock-on effect on the city’s economy. “It affects people travelling from places like York and Bradford and if the roads are flooded then that, too, has an economic cost. A stretch of the A1 in North Yorkshire was shut for seven days this year due to the weather. These are the kind of costs that are more difficult to calculate and don’t always get taken into account.”

Extreme weather events can affect us even when they occur thousands of miles away. “There’s anecdotal evidence that in Japan after the tsunami struck the country stopped the production of hard discs which was moved 
to Thailand. Then Bangkok 
was hit by floods and as a 
result we’re paying £10 or £15 more for hard disks, all because 
of flooding on the other side of 
the world.”

Prof Wright says there are other, less tangible, issues that need to be considered. “When the floods hit different parts of Yorkshire 
this year we saw the impact it 
had on people’s homes, it ruined their carpets and furniture and you could see these people were at their wits end,” he says.

“It’s an incredibly stressful experience and once someone’s been flooded they often become anxious every time it starts raining. The impact can last for years because you hear stories of some people who don’t get back into their homes again until a 
year after they were flooded, or even longer in some cases. It can affect people’s mental health as well and it can even lead to people getting divorced, but these things are much more difficult to quantify.”

So if we can’t eradicate the risk, what can we do to minimise the impact of extreme weather? “We can’t prevent flooding but we can reduce the impact it has by building flood defences in our towns and cities. We can make sure that communities are prepared for floods and are given enough warning – and that’s what we need to focus on.”