Authorities powerless to prevent this disaster
Flood defences
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Independent Minds
Nigel Roddis / Reuters
Rescue workers take a rest after a day of helping flood victims in Cockermouth.
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The calamity which has befallen Cockermouth and Workington offers a grim lesson for flood defence planners: there is only so much you can do.
This week's floods in Cumbria are different in nature from recent severe inundations which hit Britain, such as the flooding of Hull and Doncaster in June 2007 and the flooding of Tewkesbury and the Severn Valley in Gloucestershire the following month. Each of those emergencies offered valuable learning experiences for flood relief experts. The first highlighted a quite new problem: surface water. The floods that devastated the Yorkshire towns had nothing to do with the usual cause of urban flooding, an overflowing river – they were caused by the sheer volume of rainwater in the streets, which overwhelmed drainage systems.
There was no warning of the danger, because no one had ever seen so much water in the gutters and nobody knew how it would behave. The Environment Agency knew all about river and coastal flooding, but surface water was a complete unknown. Now, engineers are busily studying the problem. The lessons learned from the Severn Valley was different, but equally valuable: it concerned the vulnerability of infrastructure. Previous floods had tended mainly to affect houses, but in the Tewkesbury area water pumping and electricity substations were knocked out, and thousands of people beyond the immediate flood area were threatened with major loss of services. Once again, this is a message that has been taken to heart, and now infrastructure protection is central to flood defence.
In fact, all the lessons learned from the 2007 floods were brought together in a report last year by Sir Michael Pitt, who made 92 recommendations, such as the setting up of a specialised new flood warning centre to be run jointly by the Met Office and the Environment Agency. The Government accepted every suggestion.
But what lesson can be learned from the misery inflicted upon Cockermouth and Workington? What defences could have stood against the raging River Derwent, swollen with the heaviest rainfall Britain has ever experienced in 24 hours? What defences could have prevented the quite extraordinary sweeping away of Workington's Northside Bridge, which would not have been swept away themselves?
The 2009 Derwent flood should really be compared to the Lynmouth deluge of August 1952, when a storm of similar intensity (9in of rain in 24 hours) broke over Exmoor, sending a tidal wave of water down the narrow gorge of the River Lyn and devastating the village at its bottom, killing 34 people. Call it an act of God, call it what you like; nothing could have stopped that, as nothing could have stopped the power of the Derwent this week. In the past decade, Britain has started to take very seriously the issue of flood defence, heeding the warnings of climate scientists that global warming will mean more intense winter rainstorms with floods following in their train. But there will always be some cases, as the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, recognised yesterday, when nature's force is just too strong.
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Comments
It doesn't cost a fortune to keep ditches and drains in good order, to keep watercourses clear, and to stop building on flood plains.
It doesn't cost a fortune to plant more trees, quite the opposite, it is a profitable investment.
It doesn't cost a fortune to stop funding cultivation of marginal upland land.
It doesn't cost a fortune to stop developments that have no compensating water storage for increased surface run-off.
conjoin 'biblical' and 'natural' and we are right back with the 'primitive' gods and goddesses - is it time to revive the green man??
With Climate Change starting to take affect don't we need to head for the high ground while we still have the chance.
The more engineers mess about with the natural flow of water the worse it seems to get.
If they were running the show instead of the brown envelope boys there wouldn't be any flooding.
No buildings on flood plains; no buildings anywhere without runoff compensation.
All drains and watercourses designed and maintained properly.
No development at all on upland catchments.
Reservoirs designed to hold storm surges.
Reforestation.
Easy-peasy.
Where are the extra zillion homes they want to build going to go ? Phew :-)
First look at the "record rainfall" claims. These are rubbish. At the start of recording, all measurements needed human contact. They were therefore in areas of population. Due to natural selection, areas of population have moderate weather. Now we have remote automatic monitors they measure the extreme areas. Also, ancient rain gauges would have just overflowed in these conditions. So any comparison without full accounting of procedures is just alarmist. It has always rained heavily, and it always will, but in happens in the hills and happens some where every year.
Now what is common to these events. One certain common factor is the building of bridges and flood defenses. Tewkesbury had new structures in the river at the narrows. Sheffield has 10 new bridges around the shopping centre. The recent problems are also due to the narrowing of the river and blocking of the side arches. Every obstruction raises the river level behind it. Just look at the video of the flow past the broken bridge, the fall is easily seen. Hull had new defenses that held the water inside!
(By new, I mean anything in the last 100 years, why not, the idiots try to predict 1 in 100 year floods.)
Just because we want the land for development does not mean we can steal it from the river. All development just makes bad flood situations catastrophic.
The only way to control nature is to give it back the land and resources it needs, and stop designing for "normal" flood events. Flood defenses that are barriers are completely wrong.
Asking the Environment agency to report on its own mistakes has to be the pinnacle of corruption.
You do not stop nature, you just encourage it to take less damaging routes. All rivers must be maintained either directly or by allowing minor flooding to occur regularly. Bridges have to have extra arches and not have solid walls to the edges. There has to be bypass paths and terraced banks.
We need to think about designing so that areas DO flood regularly. Maybe the road is built lower and becomes part of the river once a year. Maybe the new car park next to the river is cut down to a lower level and becomes part of the river regularly. Maybe the new port is dug out of the sides instead of blocking the river.
Maybe we should ban all walls next to rivers. The government has this wonderful idea to destroy all the bird habitats by creating a coastal path. Why not reclaim the rivers and give us all the chance to walk down the widened flood plains of every river. This would be far more accessible to the population than the coast. It would also make the flood terraces a valued community asset not a developer's asset.
We have to get people out of their cars now. Petrol needs to be taxed hard. there are not enough resources for everyone to drive their own car where and when ever. Tax the motorist so that those who can't afford it will use public transport.
The same goes for air travel. It should not be for everyone. Most people should stay at home for holidays.
The world needs radical action now.
30 years of subsidising farmers to put in field drains, building huge shopping centre carparks, and more & more roads all taking water directly to our rivers and streams is a major factor.
building flood defenses on natural flood plains may help the immediate area, but, one mans flood defense, is some one else's flood.
I am sure that some of the smaller, but individually devastating incidents could be prevented by a few councils being sued over their non maintenance of roadside gullies.
Those in my town are cleaned once a year by subbies on a tight schedule and no one wants to loose money by banning parkinf during the operation.
Because they lied about the rain. Or allowed the banks (geddit?) too much leeway.