History > 2007 > UK > Nature / Weather (II)

 

'I don't want to die'

screams drowning teenager

July 31, 2007
From Times Online
David Byers

A teenager stranded in the floods climbed a tree in pitch darkness and screamed to passers by before a branch snapped and he plunged into the water and drowned, it was disclosed today.

Mitchell Taylor, 19, who could not swim, was caught by surprise on his way home from a night out in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, in the early hours of Saturday, July 21, after months of rainfall fell in an overnight deluge and left him stranded in a submerged field near the town's historic abbey.

As he struggled up a tree and clung to a branch, Mitchell shouted: "I can't swim. Please help me. I don't want to die."

A couple walking nearby, Andy and Vicki Haines, revealed today that they heard him shout but could not see where his voice was coming from in the darkness.

After calling 999, the couple waded into the water along with two others in an attempt to try to find him as a Sea King helicopter searched overhead, but no-one could see where the shouts were coming from.

"Then we heard a branch crack and a splash and we went mad, and shouted at him to speak to us. It seemed like forever," Mrs Haines, 31, told the Western Daily Press newspaper today.

"He kept saying ’I can’t swim, please help me, I don’t want to die’ and my friend Angela said ’We don’t want you to die. Just hold on and we’ll save you; it’ll be ok’.

"We tried again to give directions to the 999 operator saying which abbey window he was near.

"After about three more exchanges after the branch cracked we didn’t hear from him again, and it went quiet."

Cold and distraught, the four eventually went back home knowing it would be too dangerous to swim out to the teenager.

The next day they returned to the scene, but could not reach the trees where they last heard his cries because of rising flood waters.

Today, Gloucestershire Police confirmed that the body that had been discovered in receding floodwaters in Tewkesbury last weekend was that of missing Mitchell. It is believed he had been walking across the playing field, which had flooded suddenly as the deluge of rainwater fell, on his way back home after a night out at a bar in the town.

The teenager, known as Mitch, is believed to have worked as a part-time barman and was hoping to go to university.

Flowers and tributes were today seen to have been left the near the scene, which lies just a few hundred metres away from Tewkesbury Rugby Club, where Bram Lane, 64, and his son Chris, 27, were found dead last Thursday morning. The pair had worked through the night to clear flood water from the cellar of the clubhouse, but were overcome with fumes from a petrol powered pump.

As the youngster's identity was confirmed today, Severn Trent Water disclosed that the majority of the 140,000 households in Gloucestershire cut off when the Mythe water treatment works in Tewkesbury flooded had now seen their water supplies restored. However, those whose supply has been restored were still being warned that it was not yet safe to drink.

"We understand people still without water are anxious to learn when their water is coming back on, but it’s very difficult to give exact timescales and specific locations," Martin Kane, Severn Trent’s director of customer services, said today.

"We are aiming to have 80 per cent of homes back on supply within 24 hours. We must remind customers that when water is restored, it must not be used for drinking, even after boiling."

It can be used for showering, bathing, flushing toilets and washing clothes, he added.

In the meantime, emergency drinking water will continue to be supplied from bowsers, or water tanks, and bottles in the area. Severn Trent said there are 1,000 bowsers in affected areas and five million litres of bottled water were being handed out every day.

    'I don't want to die' screams drowning teenager, Ts online, 31.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2174272.ece

Mains water to return

to some flooded homes

Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Roxanne Escobales

After 11 days of deluges and shortages, residents in flooded Gloucestershire today received some good news, of sorts, with news that water supplies would start flowing to almost half of the properties cut off from the mains supply.

Residents are being warned, however, that the water cannot be used for drinking or cooking, even if boiled: it is exclusively for sanitary purposes, such as bathing, flushing toilets and washing clothes.

Water will start flowing to around 60,000 homes through 1,000 miles of empty pipes. Severn Trent Water's Martin Kane said the company aimed to get all 130,000 properties without running water reconnected by August 5.

But it remained unclear how long it would take to get safe drinking water into homes and businesses. Mr Kane urged people affected to "please be patient while we work through this plan".

Gloucestershire's chief police constable, Tim Brain, said: "Please show patience and forbearance. Supplies are returning; it may be a few hours or a few days away."

Water supplies were cut off after the water treatment plant at Mythe, in Tewkesbury, was submerged.

The police, the water company and representatives from the local and public health authorities stood side by side as they announced the latest developments. All services thanked the army for managing the rescue and aid efforts. The military will withdraw and hand over control of the area to the local authorities by 8pm.

More than 2m litres of bottled drinking water have been handed out since the floods struck, on July 20. Julie Girling , of Gloucestershire County, said extra recycling facilities would be set up so plastic bottles could be disposed of properly.

The reconnected mains supply in Cheltenham and nearby areas will be pumping water from tomorrow.

From this afternoon, pumping will begin in the following areas:

· Quedgely

· Bishop's Cleeve

· Prestbury

· Gloucester

· Churchdown

· Eastern Ave

· Longlevens

· Treadworth

· Abbeymead

· Abbeydale

· Barnwood

· Tuffley

· Podsmead

· Sandhurst

    Mains water to return to some flooded homes, G, 30.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2137906,00.html

Leading Article:

Questions now the rain has stopped

The Independent
Published: 30 July 2007

It seems safe to say that the worst of the flooding that afflicted central and western England is now over. The weekend rain was not as heavy as forecast, and yesterday the sun came out. Running water was restored to several hundred people, although it is not yet safe to drink, and some may have to wait two weeks before full service is resumed.

But the subsiding of the water is only the beginning of an aftermath that will be long and costly. For many households, the disruption of not having a habitable home will be aggravated by the unavoidable dealings with insurers, builders and banks. And revelations about the bonuses paid to officials at the Environment Agency are hardly likely to lift their mood.

Pay arrangements for agency officials and the precise demarcation of responsibilities between this quango and the Environment department are both questions that now cry out to be asked. But there are many others.

The obvious one, exemplified by the water treatment plant that was inundated and the power station that very nearly was, relates to the siting of crucial parts of the infrastructure. Another - equally obvious - is how quickly flood warnings should be acted on and where flood protection apparatus should be kept. It is no excuse for ministers to say that this is not relevant because the water would have run over the floodgates. It is relevant, although the quality of the protection also needs review.

While the emergency effort seems generally to have gone well, some aspects were better than others. For instance, demand for water after the treatment plant failed seems far to have exceeded what was envisaged.

Regrettably, contingency planning also appears to have underestimated the likely scale of vandalism and profiteering. Mobile water tanks proved particularly vulnerable. For the Government, it was unfortunate that the worst of the flooding coincided with publication of its housing White Paper, which accepted that some new homes would still be built on flood plains. The coincidence, however, had the benefit of exposing an arrangement according to which insurers had been allowed to spread the risk between those who faced a high risk and those in areas where the risk was negligible.

If climate change means that flooding will become more frequent, it is hard to see how such risk-sharing can continue. And it is not just the financial aspect but the disruption and danger to lives. Already, flood-weary householders are talking of moving away; if departures gather pace, such housing will lose its value. In this case, developers and councils will have to look to buildelsewhere. The re-think cannot start too soon.

    Leading Article: Questions now the rain has stopped, I, 30.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2816656.ece

Weather gives

flood-ravaged area a break

as engineers work

to restore water supply

· Sunshine brings relief to battered Tewkesbury
· Storm builds over bonuses for flood agency chiefs

Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian
Martin Wainwright and Tania Branigan

Devastated areas of the Severn valley had their first reprieve for over a week as heavy rainfall tracked away from the area and water engineers made unexpected progress in restoring domestic supplies.

Overnight showers in battered Tewkesbury raised fears of further misery but clearer weather pushed them east before dawn and the town basked in warm sunshine most of yesterday, along with much of the rest of the country.

But the political fallout from the floods continued as Lady Young, head of the Environment Agency, was forced to defend bonuses paid to her and other senior executives at the quango.

A huge emergency operation at the crippled Mythe water treatment plant near Tewkesbury has now restored supplies to 10,000 local homes, and 54,000 in Gloucester should be reconnected by tonight, with Cheltenham following tomorrow. The scale of the work was highlighted by Severn Thames Water, which is having to fill 54 miles of large mains and 1,200 miles of smaller pipes to avoid airlocks before taps can be turned on.

Andy Smith, the company's director of water services, said: "Significant progress was made on Saturday when an intensive testing and commissioning process made sure all damaged and flooded equipment was operational and fully repaired. The controlled process of refilling more than 1,000 miles of empty water pipes and reconnecting 130,000 homes is now in its early stages.

"However, this does not mean that customers will have water at their taps immediately. Ahead of water being reconnected, a Health and Safety advice notice is being issued by gold command [the police HQ for the stricken area]. We ask for everyone's continued patience as we head into this critical next phase."

Repeated warnings are being given that the water will initially not be safe to drink, even after boiling, and should only be used for washing and flushing the toilet until further announcements.

Gloucestershire's chief constable, Tim Brain, who helped lead the recovery effort, said: "The restoration of water supply is beginning very slowly and cautiously ... But there is clearly that light beginning to glimmer at the end of the long tunnel."

Relief at the improving situation was tempered by irritation at the bonuses for nine executives at the Environment Agency. John Edwards, 63, who was queueing for bottled water at Quedgeley, near Gloucester, said: "They should hand it back and use the money for flood defences or to help people who have lost everything."

The chief executive, Lady Young, received a £24,000 performance bonus on top of her £163,000 salary last year, despite criticisms of the agency in a recent National Audit Office report and an attack from Edward Leigh, chair of the Commons public accounts committee. He said the poor quality of many flood defences was an indictment of her time at the agency.

But the Labour peer said the NAO report showed the agency had made progress and met most of its targets, adding: "I'm jolly proud of the way our folks have worked over the last three weeks, in very difficult circumstances. There's no doubt they have done well - the forecasting was very good; the flood defence warnings went out; the defences performed to standard.

"The flooding was created by incredibly high rainfall, not by us screwing up. It would be bizarre to say we should hand our money back because of an act of God."

Lady Young said the government "desperately need" to decide who deals with surface water - responsible for many of the recent problems. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is consulting on proposals that the agency should oversee the work of councils and water companies in maintaining drainage systems as well as dealing with river and coastal flood threats.

She also said that services ranging from power supplies to the police needed to reconsider whether their installations were adequately protected and that councils had to take agency warnings about inappropriate building "very seriously". Last year local authorities approved 10 major developments against the agency's advice, but under new rules the secretary of state can call in such projects.

Forecasters meanwhile boosted hopes of some real summer, with John Hutchinson of MeteoGroup UK saying: "There is likely to be quite a bit of sunshine around."

A body found near Tewkesbury Abbey by Italian specialist rescue teams using a hovercraft was named locally as that of Mitchell Taylor, 19, who was last seen a week ago. He is the third victim in Tewkesbury.

In numbers - so far

£3bn
Estimated cost of flood damage covered by insurance

£3bn
Estimated cost of flood damage not covered by insurance - only 25% of Britons have home contents protection

500,000
Houses affected nationwide

10,000
Homes wrecked in Hull

340,000
People in Gloucestershire left without running water for over a week

387.6mm
Average rainfall across England and Wales from May to July 22, more than twice the average

£600m
Existing budget for flood protection

£14m
Cut from the Environment Agency's flood protection budget last year

£1bn
Figure the Environment Agency says it needs per year

15%
Real-terms cut in flood defence budget since 2000

25
Warning reports ignored by the government since 1997 on need for UK flood defences to be improved

30
How many more times costly it is on average to clear up your house after a flood than a burglary

    Weather gives flood-ravaged area a break as engineers work to restore water supply, G, 30.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2137644,00.html

5.15pm update

Yet more heavy rain forecast

for the weekend

Friday July 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
James Sturcke and agencies

The Met Office today warned that more heavy and persistent rain would return to southern Wales and England this weekend, bringing the risk of further flooding.

Forecasters issued another severe weather warning, saying rain would sweep across south Wales late tomorrow and spread eastwards across central and southern parts of England on Sunday.

Up to 40mm of rain was expected in some areas, such as on exposed hills, during a nine-hour period.

"The Environment Agency is warning that everywhere in England and Wales is currently saturated and there is the risk that any further heavy rainfall will run off the ground and go straight into the rivers," the Met Office said.

"As a result, we could see the levels in watercourses responding very quickly, so we urge people to remain vigilant as the unsettled period of weather is set to continue. There is also the possibility of flash flooding caused by surface water."

Water levels in the rivers Severn and Thames were currently stabilising or falling, the agency said.

The head of Gloucestershire police, Tim Brain, told a press conference that it was "essential" that people listened to forecasts over the coming days.

""We have been advised the rain will have the potential to cause localised flooding. The flood levels are not expected to be as high as those recorded last weekend."

He urged residents to be patient as the county recovered from the floods. He said 6m litres of water were being distributed daily to the 300,000 people without tap supplies. But that was only a fraction of the 120m litres Gloucestershire normally uses.

Martin Kane, of Severn Trent Water, said distributing water with the help of the army was working well and the company was "very confident" it could replenish bowsers adequately until tap supplies were restored.

It expects to have a timetable for that after tomorrow, when engineers complete their assessment of the damage at the Mythe water treatment plant. The plant, shut last weekend when it was flooded, has now been completely pumped free of water, Mr Kane said.

However, he warned that once operational again, it would take a "number of days" to recharge the network.

Severn Trent pledged to refill the bowsers up to five times a day, as it continued its battle to get the flooded Mythe treatment plant back online.

More than 300,000 people have been told they still face a wait of over a week before they get water through their taps again.

Julie Girling of Gloucestershire county council said many services were beginning to return to normal and assessment of the damage was under way. The county's road network had taken an "unprecedented battering" and its repair is expected to cost £25m, equivalent to the county's annual road maintenance budget.

"We have 100 significant sites needing major repair," she said.

One week after torrential rain triggered some of the worst flooding in modern history, the mayor of Gloucester, Harjit Gill, today launched an appeal to help those affected.

The council was launching the fund, which has already raised over £73,000, in part to help those uninsured against flood damage.

"As you will all know, Gloucestershire has faced the worst peacetime crisis in the UK in living memory," Mr Gill said. "The people need our help and if you do support this fund it will help get life back to normal for people."

He said the appeal had been driven by the people of Gloucestershire, who had phoned and written in offering help and assistance.

Paul James, the leader of Gloucester city council, said the cash would go to people not insured against flood damage and others affected by the crisis.

"We have seen lots of evidence of people in need. There has been some households within the county which have been flooded for a second time in three weeks and they will have to pay out two insurance excesses; some don't have insurance and face having all their possessions ruined."

More than 1,000 bowsers were sited across the county, but residents were still finding many of them empty.

In the Coney Hill area of Gloucester, some people complained that young thugs were urinating in the mobile tankers and breaking off taps, although police said they had yet to substantiate the reports.

The Prince of Wales met victims of the recent flooding in some of the worst-affected towns today.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall met businesspeople and members of the public in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, before moving on to Tewkesbury.

The Prince's Highgrove mansion near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, escaped being hit by the floods.

    Yet more heavy rain forecast for the weekend, G, 27.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2136316,00.html

11.30am

Rain causes havoc

to countryside calendar

Friday July 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Martin Wainwright

The biggest weekend in Britain's countryside calendar has been ruined by pouring rain and fields like glue, causing a string of cancellations and the loss of millions of pounds to the rural economy.

Days of battling churned-up mud in Yorkshire has forced the abandonment of the hugely popular annual Game Fair, alongside hundreds of smaller agricultural shows, village fetes, gymkhanas and regattas.

It marks a new level of misery for the battered rural economy, which has witnessed serious disruption since early June. Heavy rainfall began disrupting the traditional season six weeks ago, with even the flagship Royal Show closing a day early, amid scenes reminiscent of Glastonbury in a monsoon year.

"Just about every visitor's car had to be towed out by a tractor on the day they decided to call a halt," said Matthew of Natural England, the Government body in charge of countryside interests, which takes a major stall at the showground in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. "It was also striking how few people went this year, not surprisingly."

According to organisers, the last-minute cancellation of the Game Fair at Harewood House, near Leeds, means a loss of £50 million in business deals for the vast tented city, and in particular, hotel bookings and visitor services.

The fair's chairman Vincent Hedley Lewis said: "We were not defeated by foot and mouth in 2001 but the rain has defeated us this summer. Our hearts go out to all the people whose livelihood is going to be affected by our not being able to go ahead but we have done everything we could. To go ahead would have been a health and safety risk."

The sodden ground and flood damage to infrastructure has forced similar decisions on major farming shows from Penrith to South Devon - in almost every case because hired fields would have turned into quagmires. Sales of everything from tractors to corn dollies apart, the collapse of the system means a disastrous interruption to networking among farmers and agricultural traders.

Richard Cuzens of the Association of Show and Agricultural Organisations said: "Without doubt this is the most difficult show season ever. Since mid June, the weather has caused more cancellations and more disruptions to outdoor events than has ever been recorded."

His own New Forest Show is among the casualties, with the serious implications for future events that face others in the sector.

He said: "We made every effort to run all three days to attempt to give beleaguered trade stands the opportunity to be commercially viable in this most difficult year.

"But by the last day, all the rings were destroyed and turned into ploughed fields by 3pm. The difficulty facing all shows that have run under wet conditions is how to recover and restore their showground in time for their next event."

Some of the most hallowed venues in the season's calendar have been affected, including Badminton, which features on the lengthening list of cancellations by members of the British Show Jumping Association. As well as wrecking much-enjoyed days out, the weather is threatening the carefully timed program that sorts out British competitors for international events, including the Beijing Olympics.

Tim Stockdale, international rider and marketing chairman of the BSJA said: "The weather has severely disrupted the season for us to the point where we are in a continual compromise situation. The outdoor summer season plays an important part in assisting us to produce horses which we hope will go on to have British Team success.

"Even with shows that are still able to continue we face the dilemma of whether we should risk competing. Your horse's welfare is of paramount importance and the last thing anyone would want to do is risk injury. It's left us all in one of the most demoralizing positions since foot and mouth."

Shows that are going ahead include the annual gathering at Bakewell in the Peak District and Heckington Feast Week near Sleaford in Lincolnshire, which has opened its gates - rain or shine - for 900 years.

    Rain causes havoc to countryside calendar, G, 27.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2136201,00.html

Reaping what we've sown

July 27, 2007 10:30 AM
The Guardian
Graham Harvey

In Britain's waterlogged fields, farmers are struggling to salvage crops damaged by floods and the seemingly endless rain. Although there's a way to go before you'd call the 2007 harvest a write-off, there's likely to be a lot less grain going into store this year. The quality doesn't look like being up to much either.

For those with some knowledge of Britain's agrarian history, it's hard not to draw parallels with the 1870s. In the 10 years from 1871, the country suffered a series of unusually wet summers, leading to a run of crop failures. It was this climatic cycle that tipped British agriculture into more than half a century of recession, a slump that ended only with the second world war and the postwar consensus that led to the state take-over of farming.

It would be comforting to think that, in the brave new world of microprocessors and nano-technology, food production would be less vulnerable to such natural disasters. Unfortunately, the reverse is the case. If the recent floods and rainstorms prove anything, it's that at the start of the 21st century our food supplies remain worryingly insecure and precarious.

As far as the countryside is concerned the main accomplishment of the European Union - and its poisonous offspring, the common agricultural policy (CAP) - has been to increase massively the grain-growing area at the expense of grassland. Since we joined the EU in the early 1970s, Britain's wheat-growing area has doubled. Instead of grazing livestock on pasture, many cattle farmers concentrated their animals in sheds and fed them on the cheap, subsidised grain.

Compared with traditional pastoral farming systems, wheat-growing is highly unstable. It relies on energy-rich inputs of chemical fertilisers and sprays, many of them imported. It demands a decent spell of weather at harvest time if the crop is to be got in. And, even under favourable conditions, it depends on squadrons of diesel-burning monster machines to do the job.

Environmentally, it's a disaster. While pasture farming builds up organic matter levels in the soil - together with the myriad flora and fauna that make use of it - grain-production damages soil life. Under cereal crops, the level of soil organic matter steadily drops. This makes the soil far less able to hold moisture, paradoxically making food production more vulnerable to both drought and flooding.

Clearly, the UK needs to grow the wheat, oats and rye we need for human foods such as bread, cakes and biscuits. But at present, almost half our annual cereal crop is fed to livestock, many of them ruminant animals adapted to grazing grass.

Damaging our soils and landscapes in the production of animal products that could be raised more cheaply and sustainably on grassland makes no sense at all. The fact that we've arrived in such a daft situation is a mark both of the poor understanding of agriculture by the policy-makers, and the power of agribusiness companies, particularly the fertiliser and agrochemical firms.

This summer's incessant rains and flooding are a warning that our food production needs to be made more secure and disaster proof. This wouldn't be difficult. It's what British farmers have been doing throughout history whenever cereal crops have failed. They've put their land down to grass and allowed fertility to return through the natural magic of grasses, clovers and deep-rooting herbs.

After the excesses of the CAP period, Britain and Europe need to take their animals out of the dismal sheds they've been confined to for the past three decades and put them back on pasture. That way, we'll make our food production as close to disaster-proof as it's possible to be. As a bonus, it'll also be better for our health.

    Reaping what we've sown, G, 27.7.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/graham_harvey/2007/07/reaping_what_weve_sown.html
 

Heritage

Floods threaten

ancient and historic sites

Severe weather is washing away
thousands of years of heritage in the UK.

Maev Kennedy surveys the damage
to Silbury Hill and Rotherwas Ribbon

Friday July 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Maev Kennedy

Rain was falling remorselessly on Silbury Hill yesterday, pooling on the sodden fields at its foot, and dangerously seeping down into the core of the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe. The entire hill near Avebury in Wiltshire is artificial, built around 4,500 years ago by stupendous human effort with an estimated 35m baskets of chalk. Yesterday, archaeologists and engineers were engaged in urgent discussions on how to save Silbury, after the torrential rain caused further damage to a structure already weakened by earlier floods.

The engineering contractors Skanska, who were carrying out structural repairs for English Heritage, pulled its miners off the hill on Monday, fearing that the 40-year-old tunnel in which they were working might collapse. A few days ago their temporary access track was under a metre of water.

"We cannot go back in until the weather improves, but we fear there have been further collapses within the voids left by earlier archaeological investigations," project director Rob Harding said yesterday. "Ironically, I consulted local rainfall records in planning this work, to choose the driest part of the year, but we have really had a huge amount of rain, and we believe it has caused further damage." At best, work originally planned to finish within weeks has been delayed by months. At worst, the stability of the whole structure has been weakened.

Silbury's purpose - observatory, ritual platform or simply awe-inspiring demonstration of power and wealth - is still guesswork. No original chamber or passage has ever been detected. The site is wreathed in folklore of treasure hoards, which have attracted centuries of treasure-hunters.

In floods five years ago, a chasm opened at the top of the hill, where a poorly filled 200-year-old shaft collapsed, and water poured down into the structure, seeping into voids left by generations of later diggers, including the tunnels from a major excavation in the 1960s. The plan, now left in chaos by the weather, was to empty those tunnels completely of their previous loose fill, and then pack them solidly again with chalk. Instead rain is still seeping into the mound, from the summit where the earlier domed repair has already partly washed away, causing damage which can't even be fully assessed until the rain stops.

Silbury is not alone. As well as the human tragedies, the floods have been washing away thousands of years of history, across a swath of central and southern England. Silbury has been unmissable for millennia, but in Hereford, rain has been scouring away parts of a mysterious structure uncovered only a few weeks ago: the Rotherwas Ribbon, a serpentine path surfaced with deliberately burned stones, winding up a shallow hill - slap in the path of an unpopular new road plan.

English Heritage archaeologists have inspected the site - which some believe is a ritual pathway, almost as old as Silbury - and are considering whether it merits becoming a scheduled ancient monument, which would give it official protection. Meanwhile they described the remains as "extremely fragile".

The council's proposals to bury the path and proceed with the road have provoked local uproar: eight people, including residents, two archaeologists and the secretary of the local branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, appeared in court this week charged with disrupting a council meeting. A further demonstration is planned at today's council meeting when a motion will be put demanding the abandonment of the road plan until the path is fully excavated.

Meanwhile, the rain is washing stones out of the stretch already exposed. Council plans to install a temporary protective cover yesterday were abandoned. "The site was so wet we were advised we would do more harm than good," a spokesman said.

Conservation experts from both English Heritage and the National Trust were already urgently assessing the impact of climate change on fragile buildings and structures, from eroded field monuments to sodden walls of ancient houses, whose gutters and down pipes cannot cope with the recent volume of rainfall.

English Heritage chief executive Simon Thurley said: "Whether the torrential rain we have seen is caused by climate change or not is irrelevant - we do know that these weeks are going to bring many more buildings onto our at risk register."

However, one archaeologist believes climate change could provide a unique opportunity. "Much of the best preserved and most interesting evidence for ancient and historic activity, around the world, lies around the coastline and rivers and on low lying land," said Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology and an archaeologist who has excavated at Stonehenge and Silbury. "This is where people lived when drinking water did not come out of taps and boats were the most efficient means of travel." Pitts continued: "Storms and rising seas will destroy a lot of this evidence. But they will also, if we take advantage of the opportunity, allow us to investigate and learn a great deal."

    Floods threaten ancient and historic sites, G, 27.7.2007, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2136400,00.html

11.45am update

Two die

while trying to pump floodwater

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran and David Batty

Two people have died after trying to pump floodwater out of a rugby club in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, the emergency services said today.

The two appear to have been overcome by fumes from the petrol pump they were using.

Terry Standing, chief fire officer in the county, told thisisgloucestershire.co.uk: "It is a real tragedy that we have suffered two fatalities in the past 24 hours which were most likely due to people attempting to remove flood water."

He urged the public to think "safety first" when trying to pump out floodwaters

Despite widespread devastation, there have been few flood-related deaths so far.

On Tuesday, the body of a man in his 40s was pulled out of the river Great Ouse, and a woman stranded in the floods in Tewkesbury lost her newborn twins at the weekend despite efforts of the RAF to save the premature babies.

News of the deaths came as thousands of Britons already hard-hit by the worst flooding for decades, today faced more downpours in the wettest early summer on record.

The Met Office confirmed that the period from May to July was the soggiest since records began in 1766 - even before July has ended. According to the Met, 387.6mm (16 inches) of rain has already fallen across England and Wales, double the average.

The worst of the day's heavy rain is expected to fall south of the areas currently worst affected. But flood-hit communities in Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire also faced heavy spells.

However the Met Office said this particular spell of rain should pass through relatively quickly in most places.

Even as Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service confirmed that waters in Oxford had begun to subside, experts warned of the dangers of disease from the muck left behind.

Floods expert, Professor Ian Cluckie, told reporters: "People need to realise this is raw sewage they are walking around in. I've seen pictures of kids walking around in the flood water. For God's sake don't let them."

The health and protection agency said: "The floodwater affecting your home or other property may have been contaminated with sewage, animal waste and other contaminants. However infection problems arising from floods in the UK are actually rare."

The agency also advised people to avoid contact with the floodwaters. A spokeswoman said: "We would discourage people from walking around in the murky waters. They won't be able to see obstacles in the water, which could cause injury, and there's a risk of contamination from untreated sewage."

Water levels are now believed to have peaked on the River Severn and on the Thames although the Environment Agency said five severe flood warnings were still in place.

Flooding could still affect areas near Oxford, where some 900 homes have already been hit, but the agency said significant problems were unlikely despite the expectation of more rain.

In Gloucestershire, officials were still struggling to distribute water supplies to 350,000 people left without running tap water.

Bowsers, or street tanks known, set up in almost 1,000 locations, were beginning to run dry in some places as Severn Trent Water said there had been difficulties filling them up as regularly as planned."We have had 34 tankers on the road to refill bowsers. We do know there are problems trying to achieve the four or five fills that are our target," David Wickens, Severn Trent's environmental manager, told BBC radio.

He said the issue had arisen because large tankers were struggling to navigate small streets while there was a lack of smaller tankers or qualified tanker lorry drivers.

The Red Cross, which has raised 500,000 pounds through its national floods appeal, will also deliver 400 food parcels to the most vulnerable people affected.

The latest floods have caused an estimated £3bn of damage to homes and businesses. Last month, flooding also hit swathes of central and northern England. Farmers said the torrential rain and flooding has devastated crops and dairy farms.

    Two die while trying to pump floodwater, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2135017,00.html
 

10am

More rain forecast

in Britain's wettest ever early summer

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran

Thousands of Britons already hard-hit by the worst flooding for decades today faced more downpours as the Met Office confirmed that Britain experienced its wettest early summer on record.

Figures showed that the period from May to July was the soggiest since records began in 1766 - even before the month is over. According to the Met Office, 387.6mm (16 inches) of rain has already fallen across England and Wales.

The worst of the day's heavy rain is expected to fall south of the areas currently worst affected. But flood-hit communities in Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire also faced heavy spells.

But the Met Office said this particular spell of rain should go through relatively quickly for most places.

Even as Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service confirmed that waters in Oxford had begun to subside, experts warned of the dangers of disease from the muck left behind.

Floods expert, Professor Ian Cluckie, told reporters: "People need to realise this is raw sewage they are walking around in. I've seen pictures of kids walking around in the flood water. For God's sake don't let them."

    More rain forecast in Britain's wettest ever early summer, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2135017,00.html

Long history

of fighting the Thames tides

July 26, 2007
From The Times
Alan Hamilton

Father Thames is a crotchety and unreliable old man. No one in their right mind would build a capital city on his floodplain.

Forget, for a moment, the recent freak weather. Just extend your little finger across the breakfast table and contemplate its height. High water at London Bridge increases by that much every year. Piffling, you will say, but it adds up to two feet a century.

You can blame Scotland, as you often do. Relieved of its weighty burden of the last Ice Age, the northern kingdom is still rising, and as a consequence the whole island is on the tilt; southern England from the Wash to the Severn is sinking.

At the same time London is settling into its own plastic foundation of clay, and the decline of industry, which used to extract vast amounts of groundwater, means that the water table is rising. London Underground pumps the equivalent of 3,000 swimming pools out of its tunnels a day.

Surge tides from the North Sea are London’s traditional enemy, which is why in 1982 the Thames Barrier was opened at Woolwich. This brilliant and unimaginably expensive engineering feat protects London for now, but in not much more than 20 years it will have to be made higher.

An unfettered Thames had been bursting its banks for centuries. In medieval times it regularly overflowed from the City to Westminster, creating a vast and fetid lake fed additionally by its stinking tributary, the Fleet.

There was a mighty inundation in 1236, recorded by John Stow in his Chronicles of England.

“The River Thames, overflowing its banks, caused the marshes all about Woolwich to be all a sea wherein boats and other vessels were carried by the stream, so that besides cattle a great number of inhabitants there were drowned, and in the great Palace of Westminster men did row with wherries in the midst of the Hall.”

It happened again in 1663, as recorded by Samuel Pepys in December 7. “There was last night the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England to have been in this river, all Whitehall having been drowned.”

Constrained by the building of the Victoria Embankment in the 19th century, the river behaved itself a little better, until on January 6, 1928, the tide in central London rose to 1.8m (6ft) above the predicted level.

Flood reports started coming in from Battersea, Poplar and Greenwich. The embankment at Temple station was awash, as was the whole of Old Palace Yard, Westminster.

The embankments could not contain the water. The first section to give way was at Millbank; the Tate Gallery was flooded almost to the tops of its ground-floor doors, and its collection of Turners was damaged. Lots Road power station near Chelsea, Wandsworth gasworks and the Blackwall Tunnel were all partly flooded.

But the worst consequence was the failure of a 25m stretch near Lambeth Bridge, drowning 14 people and leaving another 4,000 homeless.

Central London escaped the worst effects of the great flood of 1953, but the barriers subsequently erected around East Anglia merely moved the problem, forcing even more water up the Thames and making construction of the Barrier ever more urgent.

London had another wake-up call as recently as September 2000, when a tributary of the Thames, the Roding, overflowed its defences and flooded 320 properties in the Wanstead and Woodford areas of East London.

One way to protect London would be to raise the riverside defences until they are as high as the lampposts. The idea has been consistently rejected on the ground that Londoners would not be able to see the river that both threatens and enchants them.

    Long history of fighting the Thames tides, Ts, 26.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2141375.ece

On the night watch

waiting for water to rise

July 26, 2007
From The Times
Lucy Bannerman

Purley on Thames was the latest town in the South East where residents went to bed last night wondering if they would wake up under the Thames this morning.

The town, outside Reading, has been put on red alert by the Environment Agency. There is an imminent threat that the storm drains will finally be defeated by the onslaught of a rising river and unwelcome rain.

One resident, Tony King, has gained shortlived comfort from the pump that he has just installed in his front room. A hose gushes a steady stream of water out through the French windows into the swollen river at the bottom of the garden.

He said that by yesterday there were three inches in the house. “I’ve now got two pumps, including a submersible, which will keep the levels at four to five inches, but I don’t think they will last much longer,” he said.

“That’s why I’ve asked this guy to borrow his massive pump for an hour later on.”

His neighbour, Mark Dixon, stood at his side with the confidence one would imagine from a man who has the luxury of a large, mechanical flood device originally used by a fire engine.

Original warnings put the estimated peak time at 4.15am yesterday. But the worst is yet to come, according to the local authorities.

With a pot of damp seal in one hand, and protected up to the waist with waterproofs, Mr King waded towards a wooden post that marks the historic river levels.

“People have been saying it’s going to be the worst for 100 years. Maybe for England, but not for Purley. If the estimates are right this time, the waters will rise between 6pm and midnight. I will be relieved as long as it is not worse than 2003.”

He marks the 2003 watermark on the post with the side of his hand: 15.6ft from the river bed, still well above current levels. “And if it reaches 1947 levels,” he indicated his waist, “we are all in trouble.”

Mr King said that he believed such extreme conditions were unlikely. His mood remained cheery and upbeat, probably because he is a maintenance engineer and better prepared than most. However, Vaughan King, another resident, surveyed Winteringham Way with a look of concern.

“That one is about to go any minute now,” he said, pointing to the furious whirl above a drain cover in a nearby puddle. “Then that one, then that one, and the whole street will be covered. The drains just can’t take any more.”

At the Purley Park Social Club, chairs were balanced on the pool table, and crews from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service rolled their orange waterproof suits down to the waist to enjoy a cup of tea before the predicted storm. One rescue worker said: “We’ve had a quiet few days here but tonight is going to be the test.”

The bar manager, who declined to be named, said that she was worried about the long-term effect on property prices and the difficulty of finding insurance in the future.One drinker said with a mixture of cynicism and impatience: “We keep being told about this surge and yet it never comes.”

Another regular, Craig Brown, said he was confident that his own house farther uphill would be spared. But he lamented the flooding in his boss’s garden. “I just helped landscape that, with patios and rockeries and everything. Now, it’s all gone.”

With their own house sandbagged and secured, Helen and Iain Baines dug out wellington boots so that they and their two young boys could monitor the floods.

Mr Baines said: “We keep getting conflicting information. You get geared up for these different times when the surges are expected and then nothing.” His wife said: “Rather that than the other way round.”

    On the night watch waiting for water to rise, Ts, 26.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2141381.ece

An early morning knock on the door

and evacuation for Oxford residents

as water levels predicted to rise again

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian
Rachel Williams

Dozens of people in Oxford were woken in the small hours yesterday by a knock on the door from police offering to evacuate them and warning that the situation could get worse.

With up to 4ft of water surging past in the worst-hit places, about 120 people were ferried from the Botley Road area to the west of the city centre in 4x4s and dinghies, either to stay with friends and relatives or at an emergency shelter set up at Oxford United's Kassam Stadium.

By the afternoon, firefighters said the water level appeared to have stabilised but warned it could get worse again if further rain fell today. Residents estimated it had been rising by an inch every hour at its most vigorous. Some reported up to 2ft of water in their ground floor rooms.

Meanwhile, firefighters were pumping water from an electricity substation in nearby Ferry Hinksey Road. Power to hospitals was rerouted. Fire crews said they were getting more water out than was getting in and there was no immediate risk to power.

A spokesman for Southern Electric, which owns the substation, said: "We are monitoring a number of substations across the area which are potentially at risk from flooding. A limited number of people would be affected."

At the Kassam Stadium about 150 evacuated residents, including 50 elderly people from Abingdon, were given dry clothing, toiletries and even massages by volunteers from the St John Ambulance and the Red Cross. Some were taken to the cinema and bowling alleys at a nearby entertainment complex, while families made temporary homes in the stadium's corporate boxes.

In Botley Road and many of the surrounding streets, residents splashed through the murky water in wellies, barefoot or by bike. The door of St Frideswide's church stood open as water lapped around it from all sides, and on the river itself the fast-flowing water, already over the banks, pushed menacingly at walls of sandbags.

Outside the Osney Arms, Fiona Paltreeman relaxed in the rain with a glass of white wine as she prepared to wade through thigh-high water to reach her ground-floor flat.

"We're not flooded yet but the car park is," she said. "I saw a goldfish in there earlier. The police came round this morning to ask if we wanted to leave. They explained it could get worse, but nobody is really sure what it's going to do. We decided to stay. It's your home, you just want to stay."

Water levels are expected to remain high for the next 24 hours and match those seen in the December 2003 floods.

Abingdon is still under the threat of a severe flood warning. There is also a severe flood warning in force from Eynsham Lock, Eynsham, to Sandford Lock, Sandford-on-Thames, and from there down to Days Lock on the river Thames.

    An early morning knock on the door and evacuation for Oxford residents as water levels predicted to rise again, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134802,00.html

Brown praises

firefighters and marines

for turning tide

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian
Owen Bowcott

The prime minister saw at first hand the damage inflicted by flood waters yesterday when he met firefighters and Royal Marines who battled to save an electricity station near Gloucester.

Gordon Brown, making his second visit to flood-stricken areas in recent days, arrived at the Walham sub-station, where the river peaked just two inches below the top of hastily erected emergency defences. If water had poured into the plant, electricity supplies to 500,000 homes would have been cut off.

Mr Brown thanked volunteers and rescue workers who worked through the night to hold back the deluge.

"Thank you so much. People were really depending on you," he told them. "We've got to get the supplies stepped up.

"We will get more tankers in, we will get more bowsers in, we will get more regular filling of them, and at the same time, more bottled water will be provided."

The prime minister, who watched Royal Marines fill sandbags, was accompanied by Gloucestershire's chief constable, Tim Brain, and the city's MP, Parmjit Dhanda.

They stopped to talk to Royal Marines who took a short break from shovelling sand into bags to speak about what they were doing.

Corporal David Hill, from 42 Commando Royal Marines, said he had just returned from Afghanistan and admitted that this task was relatively stress-free in comparison.

"It is hard work," he said. "We have got about 20 or 30 blokes filling about 1,000 bags an hour, which will be used on the flood defences. We only got back from Afghanistan three months ago so we are quite used to filling sandbags. Usually we are being shot at as we do it, so this is a breeze."

Residents from flood-threatened homes in west Oxford staged a climate change demonstration on the flooded Botley Road last night.

Blaming recent extreme weather on high carbon emissions, they marched with banners saying Gordon Stop Climate Change, and Floody Hell Gordon.

    Brown praises firefighters and marines for turning tide, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134879,00.html
 

Horses given house room

as village becomes an island

Locals return home by boat to check on animals saved from flooded fields

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian
Steven Morris


Tricky the Palomino pony was busy licking the Farrow & Ball paint - a tasteful powder blue - off the walls. Charlie and Molly were busy too, snaffling food from the antique wash basin and slurping from the bucket perched on the rattan table.

Such was the scene inside Dawn Melvin and Andy Green's 17th century farmhouse in Gloucestershire. Needs must in times of disaster. As the flood waters crept ever closer to their home, Dawn and Andy moved their horses on to ever high ground.

And when the high ground had been inundated, they did what any horse lover would do - invited them into the house, the boot room, to be precise, normally the home of the washing machine and the children's muddy shoes.

Dawn and Andy live in Sandhurst. Though Gloucester Cathedral is visible only a few miles away this village has turned into one of the most isolated areas, cut off from both sides by murky floodwater.

The Guardian yesterday joined Dawn and Andy on an extraordinary trip up Sandhurst Lane - normally a tree-lined country road, now a fast-flowing river - on an inflatable with a team from the voluntary rescue organisation Rapid UK.

Amazingly, some people on Sandhurst Lane have refused to be evacuated though their homes were full of water. Des Lawrence, for example, was living in the first floor of his semi. He had stayed to look after his neighbour, 82-year-old Doris Lewis. "She has no relatives so I've decided not to go. We're OK. The emergency services are making sure we have enough food."

And, to maintain the animal theme, Mr Lawrence is also looking after a neighbour's macaque monkey, Pugsey. The water is lapping around Pugsey's enclosure. "But he seems happy enough," said Mr Lawrence. "We've got enough fruit for him."

The inflatable boat skips around a sunken JCB and boats that have been flipped over. A Mini is stuck in the White Horse pub car park. A classic motorcycle that was being lovingly restored lies sodden in a driveway.

Ironically, given the shortage of drinking water, hundreds of bottles of water were floating near the pub - apparently a load had tipped off the back of an army lorry as they tried to deliver supplies. And, worryingly, a large plot of land on the flood plain just sold off for building houses lay several metres under water.

In Sandhurst itself many thousands of pounds of damage has been caused to a thatched cottage belonging to Dave Munn and Sandra Wickenden a little further on. They reluctantly left their home when the waters charged into their living room. They have been back - by rowing boat - to find devastation.

"We've spent five years refurbishing our place, then this. We had a flood plan all worked out but the water kept climbing and we had to get out." They have witnessed one amazing sight - a farmer, Mike Smith, donning his wet suit and, helped by friends in canoes, swimming three cows out on to higher ground because they were about to calve.

And so to Dawn and Andy's home, Abloads Court. They and their three children were finally forced to leave the ponies behind on Sunday night when the water gushed into their house - the only time it has reached their property since it was built in the 1600s.

They were back yesterday to check the ponies in the boot room were content and well.

Archie, the helmsman on the inflatable, could easily spot their driveway. It was several feet under water but the tops of a line of cherry trees marked its boundaries. Happily, the water had retreated from the front door and the living room.

Dawn was worried that the ponies might be a bit frisky at the sight of so many strangers. But they were calm and friendly. "I think they are relieved just to see somebody," she said.

The couple looked ruefully at their drenched orchard and half submerged children's play equipment. They were glad, however, that the idea of jamming apples into the cars' exhausts had kept the water out of them.

But most of all they were relieved that the ponies were healthy. "They seem fine," said Andy. "It's a bit cramped in there but we've got loads of hay on the flagstones. They should be all right."

The couple picked a bottle of wine they had left behind and got back into the Rapid UK boat to be taken back from the island. They will return for good in the next few days. "We'll go and fetch some provisions and come back as soon as we can to start cleaning up," said Dawn. And, of course, get the ponies out of their boot room.

    Horses given house room as village becomes an island, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134804,00.html

2.45pm update

Police chief warns over flood disorder

Wednesday July 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran and Matthew Weaver


Police said today they would not tolerate disorder, amid reports of profiteering following floods that have left 350,000 people in Gloucestershire without water.
"No exceptions will be taken in any cases of disorder," said Tim Brain, the chief constable of Gloucestershire.

His warning followed incidents in which people have been trying to resell water being distributed from bowsers - portable water containers - a ploy described by Mr Brain as theft.

With drinking water unlikely to be restored for another seven to 14 days, the supply of bottled water and water from bowsers has become a key issue for the emergency services.

While officials in Gloucestershire grappled with the distribution of drinking water, hundreds of people were evacuated from newly flooded homes in Oxford as residents in vulnerable towns along the river Thames were warned that water levels could peak today.

After last-ditch efforts yesterday to save power supplies in Gloucestershire, attention switched to protecting substations in Oxfordshire from rising water levels.

Emergency services took people from 250 homes in the Osney area, west of Oxford, to emergency shelter at the Kassam football stadium. In the flooded area of the city, water levels were expected to remain high for the next 24 hours and to match levels seen in the December 2003 floods.

Firefighters blocked off Earl Street, off Botley Road in Oxford, which was up to 1.2 metres (4ft) under water. Police reported some loss of power to homes in the area.

This afternoon, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, will make another visit to Gloucestershire, where he made a brief visit on Monday.

At question time in parliament, Mr Brown announced that help for the flood-stricken areas of England would be boosted to £46m.

"We have substantially raised the funds available so that local authorities are in a better position to respond," Mr Brown said. He said infrastructure needs for the future would have to be looked at, and warned that more money would have to be invested to prevent floods in coming years.

Last night there were fears that Oxford's Osney Mead substation could be breached, but the plant, which powers tens of thousands of homes, was still working today. Police said there was now "no immediate risk" that it would flood.

Geoff Bell, of the Environment Agency, said water from the flood plain west of Oxford was working its way from the fields outside the city into the residential area.

Thames tributaries in the area such as Bullstake stream were now spilling over and compounding the flooding, he said. The Thames itself was only expected to rise about 2.5cm this morning.

Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, was still under threat of further flooding and river levels remained high there. Henley was expected to flood this afternoon. Pangbourne, Purley and Mapledurham were bracing themselves for a peak this evening and flooding was expected to start in Reading and Caversham tonight.

The flood peak was forecast to reach Marlow, Cookham, Datchet, Wraysbury, Staines, Laleham and Shepperton later in the week, but with only limited flooding.

The towns of Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead will be protected from the floodwaters by the Jubilee and Cookham flood defences, according to the Environment Agency.

In Gloucestershire, the task of returning water supplies to 140,000 homes continued as engineers began assessing the flood damage at the deluged Mythe water treatment plant, in Tewkesbury.

Many homes near the plant were still inundated with floodwater. But water levels were continuing to recede, with many people hoping to return to their homes and start the process of cleaning up.

Shoppers in a Tesco supermarket in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, were being rationed to three loaves of bread and 16 litres of water, in an attempt to stop panic buying.

"People should exercise patience and forbearance," Mr Brain said. "We urge people to conserve water supplies. We are in an emergency and people are going to have use a miminum amount of water. The vast majority of people in Gloucestershire are doing that. Exercise common sense and be a good neighbour."

Gloucestershire is doubling the number of bowsers available to 1,050 and is asking the government for additional tankers and drivers. Four million litres of bottled water were brought into Cheltenham yesterday to be distributed throughout the county, and 5.5m today. With sanitation also becoming an issue, 1,400 emergency toilets were being brought in.

There was still no word on the Tewkesbury teenager Mitchell Taylor, who has not been seen since the height of the floods.

Yesterday, fire crews rescued a man and a boy from the Ouse at Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire, after the pair were spotted clinging to a branch.

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said the recent flooding - the worst for more than 60 years - was far from over and had caused "considerable human distress".

    Police chief warns over flood disorder, G, 25.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134234,00.html

12.45pm update

Rising floodwaters

force Oxford evacuations

Wednesday July 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Weaver and agencies


Hundreds of people have been evacuated from newly flooded homes in Oxford as residents in vulnerable towns along the river Thames were warned that water levels could peak today.

After last-ditch efforts yesterday to save power supplies in Gloucestershire, attention has switched to protecting substations in Oxfordshire from rising water levels.

Emergency services took people from 250 homes in the Osney area, west of Oxford, to emergency shelter at the Kassam football stadium. In the flooded area of the city, water levels were expected to remain high for the next 24 hours and to match levels seen in the December 2003 floods.

Firefighters blocked off Earl Street, off Botley Road in Oxford, which was up to 1.2 metres (4ft) under water. Police reported some loss of power to homes in the area.

This afternoon, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, will make another visit to Gloucestershire, where he made a brief visit on Monday.

In prime minister's questions today, David Drew, the Labour MP for Stroud, told Mr Brown it "cannot be right" that his constituents had been told they faced a 14-day wait for water supplies to be restored. Mr Brown told the Commons he wanted to see water supplies in flood-hit areas restored "as soon as possible".

Commentators say Mr Brown is trying to avoid accusations of inaction that dogged the US president, George Bush, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Last night there were fears that Oxford's Osney Mead substation could be breached, but the plant, which powers tens of thousands of homes, was still working today. Police said there was now "no immediate risk" that it would flood.

Geoff Bell, of the Environment Agency, said water from the flood plain west of Oxford was working its way from the fields outside the city into the residential area.

Thames tributaries in the area such as Bullstake stream were now spilling over and compounding the flooding, he said. The Thames itself was only expected to rise about 2.5cm this morning.

Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, was still under threat of further flooding and river levels remained high there. Henley was expected to flood this afternoon. Pangbourne, Purley and Mapledurham were bracing themselves for a peak this evening and flooding was expected to start in Reading and Caversham tonight.

The flood peak was forecast to reach Marlow, Cookham, Datchet, Wraysbury, Staines, Laleham and Shepperton later in the week, but with only limited flooding.

The towns of Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead will be protected from the floodwaters by the Jubilee and Cookham flood defences, according to the Environment Agency.

In Gloucestershire, the task of returning water supplies to 140,000 homes continued as engineers began assessing the flood damage at the deluged Mythe water treatment plant, in Tewkesbury.

Engineers from Severn Trent Water, which owns the site, today hoped to enter the plant for the first time. Once inside, they could gain an idea of when the water might be turned back on. The damage assessment is expected to take two to three days.

Many homes near the plant in Tewkesbury were still inundated with floodwater. But water levels were continuing to recede, with many people hoping to return to their homes and start the process of cleaning up.

Shoppers in a Tesco supermarket in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, were being rationed to three loaves of bread and 16 litres of water, in an attempt to stop panic buying.

There was still no word on the Tewkesbury teenager Mitchell Taylor, who has not been seen since the height of the floods.

Yesterday, fire crews rescued a man and a boy from the Ouse at Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire, after the pair were spotted clinging to a branch.

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said the recent flooding - the worst for more than 60 years - was far from over and had caused "considerable human distress".

The government has pledged a further £10m to help battle the floods, in addition to the £14m initially promised by Mr Brown earlier this month.

    Rising floodwaters force Oxford evacuations, G, 25.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134234,00.html

Mark Steel:

Well, if the Romans built on flood plains...

We can't take their advice
- they also built a city at the bottom of Mount Vesuvius

Published: 25 July 2007
The Independent

Maybe this really is a new period of government with no PR spin, because no one concerned with their image would announce building 20,000 houses on flood plains in the middle of the country's worst-ever floods.

And the housing minister, Yvette Cooper, tried to justify this by saying that York was a fine place to build houses because "The Romans built it on a flood plain". We can't take advice on this issue off the Romans - they built a city at the bottom of Mount Vesuvius and look what happened to that. When she was criticised, she claimed this was an attack on "affordable housing". By this logic she could announce 10,000 cheap houses are to be built in containers full of nuclear waste and, if anyone complained, she could say: "How dare you attack the concept of affordable housing?"

Maybe we'll at last see the benefits of the war in Iraq, and 10,000 affordable town houses for young families will be built on a brown-field site in Basra. Even then they'd probably be bought by bankers, who'd then let them out to jihadists as somewhere to keep people they'd kidnapped until the value had doubled.

Anyway, if the floods keep coming, they'll transform the housing market. Because the safest place to live will be the highest point possible. Estate agent adverts will boast "STAR OFFER ... VERY desirable property in highly sought after location *** This NINETEENTH floor flat in Moss Side tower block MUST BE SEEN ... ALL LIFTS BUSTED so no chance of soaking-wet people making their way to your level ... £3,000,000 ... no reduced offers considered." And five-bedroom houses in Maidenhead will be on a hard-to-let register and used for putting up refugees from Somalia.

One inevitable line of whining has been the one pursued by a columnist in the Mail, who complained: "If this biblical flooding was happening in some far-flung Third World country, pop stars would be falling over themselves to record a charity single." And someone in The Sun said: "If this was happening anywhere else in the world, the Government would be sending wads of our cash."

Which seems to be getting things a little out of perspective. It's doubtful whether Live Aid would have taken off quite as much as it did, if the song had been: "The river banks burst / So the carpets went first / And one woman's fridge / Is now under the bridge. / It's a tale of endurance / But they should get most of it back / On the insurance."

It is almost as if they're angry at how Middle England has suffered most, as if this were a politically correct flood that once again attacks the decent, silent majority, because these days a flood daren't devastate an inner-city area, in case someone accuses it of being racist!

But the irony is it's these same people who are most damning about the probable cause of the floods, which is global warming. It's possible this would have happened anyway, but the floods are almost exactly as predicted by climate-change scientists. Those people who remain certain there's no global warming could have been on the Ark, and they'd have said: "Oh, bloody hell Noah, don't tell me even you've fallen for this nonsense about God being angry - this is all just part of a natural pattern."

Once things start turning out exactly as the theorists said they would, surely you have to accept they've got a point. If, for example, there was a thunderclap followed by live coverage on Sky news of a lamb opening seals and then four horsemen who brought with them war, famine, pestilence and death, I'd swallow my pride and accept that the Christians had been right after all.

The Government accepts that global warming is the likely cause, but seems incapable of doing anything to curb it. For example, one billion pounds is being removed from subsidies to the privatised train companies which sum will be made up in increased fares, which therefore must increase the use of cars.

Similarly, the private water companies were discouraged from building larger drains and sewage systems, because this would have increased water charges. And no one dare suggest decreased water or rail company profits. And the same profit-driven logic will apply to the building of new houses.

So, as the floods get worse, the next move will be to privatise the flood relief, as this is the only way to attract much-needed investment into the emergency industry. Advertisers will divert the river, so the chimneys sticking above the water spell "DFS sofas". And, as residents are hoisted out of their upstairs bedroom window, they'll be asked: "Would you like a pastry with your rescue?" Meanwhile, the housing minister will justify with history why she can spend her day fiddling.

    Mark Steel: Well, if the Romans built on flood plains..., I, 25.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/mark_steel/article2798497.ece

Deborah Orr:

Amid this latest apocalypse,

the prophets of doom

are all peddling their own agendas

Each generation feels
its own fears about the future
are more urgent than any that have gone before

Published: 25 July 2007
The Independent

One of the oddest tributes to the imaginative ingenuity of the human mind is its capacity to take the facts and manufacture from them, regardless of what they are, a narrative that corresponds with whatever our own view of the world happens to be. There's a great deal of that sort of thing going on at the moment, and while the process is nothing new, each generation, no doubt, feels that its own set of fears and worries about the future is more real and more urgent than any that has gone before.

Those of us lucky enough to be consuming the spectacle of Britain in flood from the comfort of warm, dry homes are now, broadly, of the opinion that this is a consequence of man-made climate change. My friend Charles, a farmer in the Vale of Evesham, is not one of the fortunate majority for whom the floods are something to maintain a mere watching brief on. His home is flooded with backed-up sewage, the crops in his fields are ruined, and what's left of last year's harvest, stored in his barn, is wrecked as well.

Of all he has witnessed in the last few days, he says that the most surreal scenario came about when he went to rescue a recalcitrant elderly man who was refusing to leave his flood-threatened home, only to find him sitting in a state of single-minded concentration, watching news of the deluge on television, while the water in his own living room advanced smartly towards him. Sometimes the ability to persuade ourselves that disaster is what happens to other people is powerful indeed.

Charles has been convinced of the reality of climate change for some years now. Those few among us who remain loath to join the apocalyptic throng do so for political reasons. The left, the deniers suspect, disappointed by the failure of socialism, have switched to a politics-of-envy meta-narrative. The downside of capitalism is no longer as local a difficulty as violent revolution. The downside is the destruction of the planet itself. Interestingly, their messianic defence of capitalism has backed them into a corner more dystopian than that of the most miserablist of lefties. The end of the world may well be nigh, they now grudgingly admit, but this is nothing a reordering of human priorities can have any bearing upon.

In his latest book, Black Mass, the philosopher John Gray traces the history of Western millenarianism, and suggests that the war in Iraq is no more or less than the latest in a long line of apocalyptic fantasies, rooted in religion and embarked upon under the misapprehension that a world-changing event can bring history, with all its conflicts, to an end. This particular fantasy, of course, was the neo-conservative enthusiasm for the idea that liberal democracy is an irresistible force in and of itself. Such projects, Gray wearily counsels, will always end in tears.

For Gray, it is utopianism itself that is the problem. He suggests that "it is dystopian thinking we most need." We must, if we seek to understand our present condition, he says, "turn to Huxley's Brave New World or Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Wells's Island of Dr Moreau or Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Zamiatin's We or Nabokov's Bend Sinister, Burroughs' Naked Lunch or Ballard's Super-Cannes - prescient glimpses of the ugly reality that results from pursuing unrealisable dreams."

Actually, there's not even a need to trawl back five or so years to the publication of Super-Cannes, stunning a read though it is. Dystopian futures have of late become a staple of mainstream contemporary literature. While Ballard is for me quite possibly the pre-eminent living English novelist, he has long been considered as foremost a sci-fi writer rather than a proper literary type, with only his naturalistic memoirs Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women awarded the unequivocal reverence all his work deserves. Suddenly, though, sci-fi has acquired literary credibility. We are now so comfortable with the idea of a post-apocalyptic future that such subject matter has seamlessly become part of the until-now unyieldingly naturalistic mainstream English literary scene.

Most garlanded and most widely read is Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which achieved the satisfying double whammy of intellectual and populist top marks by winning this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and being featured on Oprah's book club. His story is of the struggle of a man and his son for survival in a US made desperately savage by climate catastrophe, and offers the sobering message that under such circumstances it would be foolhardy to expect anything more than the tiniest minority to behave with any decency at all.

Sarah Hall, whose first novel, Haweswater, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and whose second, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Booker, is poised to publish The Carhullan Army, a futuristic fantasy in which a group of radical feminists make a stand against a Britain in repressive, authoritarian economic collapse. She joins a modest tradition, since Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing, to name but two, have each offered similarly cautionary tales. The big shift from genre, though, is that her book is not being marketed as either "sci-fi" or "feminist", any more than McCarthy's is as "sci-fi" or "masculinist".

Even children's literature, dominated as it is by the über-fantasy of Harry Potter, has offered up a naturalistic post-apocalyptic classic, in the form of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for new writers. It has echoes of Iain Seraillier's wonderful Second World War story The Silver Sword, since it involves a group of children separated from adults in a time of war, but of course distinguishes itself by being set during a war that is yet to come.

So, Gray can rest assured that cultural workers of the highest order are all indulging like mad in dystopian thinking, and that no one is turning a hair. In these novels we are offered three very distinct future dystopias, one triggered by environmental collapse, another by economic meltdown, and a third by a new world war. So far so good (in a way).

But what's touchingly obtuse about all three of these books is that, even as they square up unflinchingly to a grim new world, they each indulge in their different ways in a type of wish-fulfilment that can be described, if not as utopian, at least as hopelessly romantic. McCarthy posits a future in which fathers and sons will reconnect at a manly and silent spiritual level through their travels in the not-so-great outdoors. Hall grasps the hope that women will prove themselves as warriors far pluckier than rubbishy men, while Rosoff sticks with the lovely notion that human love can survive all pain and suffering.

Each of these is an arrogant dystopia, in which everything changes except the beliefs that their creators and their protagonists hold dearest. The end of the world may be nigh. But somehow, we'll all survive it, integrity and value-systems reassuringly intact. As if that, of course, is not the very reason why humans might just find themselves quite, quite unable to change the unpromising course of their future.

    Deborah Orr: Amid this latest apocalypse, the prophets of doom are all peddling their own agendas, I, 25.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/deborah_orr/article2798494.ece

What lies beneath the floods

As the filthy flood waters begin to subside, they are revealing a scene of devastated homes. Now there are warnings of a mounting health risk from toxic chemicals and fatal bugs left behind in the wake of the deluge

Published: 25 July 2007
The Independent
By Jonathan Brown

The filthy brown flood waters may have been subsiding yesterday but the tide of human misery they have left in their wake was relentlessly swelling.

Few aspects of everyday life across huge swathes of central England have been unaffected by the unprecedented deluge of last weekend. It will be many weeks before normality returns.

The grim task of sifting through possessions was already under way yesterday. A steadily mounting pile of soaked and soiled items seemed to stand guard at every front door, waiting to come under the calculating eye of the insurance loss adjustor.

For more than 350,000 people in Gloucestershire the most pressing issue was not the loss of possessions, many of them prized. The biggest problem remains the lack of clean water after the county's main treatment plant was knocked out.

And it emerged last night that in the event of the flooding of Walham power station ­ which escaped being hit by waters from the Severn by two inches in the early hours of yesterday ­ ministers had drawn up plans to carry out evacuations inn Cheltenham and Gloucester. Yesterday in communities which only a few days ago were coping with little more than the inconvenience of the wretched British summer, residents were told it could be up to two weeks before they are reconnected to the mains water supply.

In the meantime they must queue for bottled water or fill containers at 900 bowsers in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Stroud. The council also issued an urgent plea for portable lavatories.

There were warnings of a mounting health risk from thousands of gallons of sewage and toxic chemicals that have spilled into homes, gardens and streets in recent days. The Health Protection Agency urged people to keep out of the water to avoid contact with potentially fatal microbes such as E.coli. The agency also warned of a sharp rise in stress-related illnesses as a result of the flooding.

A pregnant woman stranded in the floods lost her twins despite being airlifted to hospital. The woman gave birth to the premature twins in her Tewkesbury home moments before RAF rescue helicopters arrived. She was taken by one helicopter, and her babies were carried in another, to Cheltenham General Hospital where the babies died. The woman was 21 weeks pregnant and her family had called 999 on Saturday morning, but floods blocked the ambulance.

Tewkesbury, cut off by the flooded Severn and Avon rivers, yesterday remained little more than a ghost town with hotels ordered to close to guests, many of them stranded tourists, because of the lack of flushing lavatories. Joe Bishop, a manager at the Bell Hotel, where water continued to lap around the historic building, said staff had worked round the clock to stay open.

"The water level is going down a bit but we've run out of water, food, beer and linen and we've been told to close as a hotel. We've still got quite a few guests so I don't know where they are going to sleep tonight," he said.

John Healey, the Flood Recovery minister, who visited the market town as it suffered its fifth day under water yesterday, said it was impossible to rule out a repeat of the severe weather. The Government pledged a further £10m to alleviate the crisis.

The Association of British Insurers said its members had received 8,000 new claims since Saturday, 80 per cent of them from those whose homes had been flooded; that figure was set to rise. The cost of the summer floods in damage to property and loss of business rose to £2bn, insurers said, although one analyst put the figure at £3bn for repairs to damaged roads, railway lines and bridges alone.

In Gloucester, half of the city's shops were closed due to a lack of fresh water as the main A40 route into town remained impassable to traffic. Council offices were also shut as were the courts and major businesses.Non-urgent operations were cancelled at the Gloucestershire Royal and at the Cheltenham General.

There were also concerns over Gloucester City football club after its ground, Meadow Park, was flooded to the height of the crossbars. In Cheltenham, the Army is handing out bottled water at the racecourse. " We've got two babies aged six months and 18 months so obviously it's incredibly difficult not being able to bath them ­ you don't realise how often you need to use the water until it's gone," said Kelly Davis.

The spa town's pubs, restaurants and cafes currently at the height of the tourist season were severely affected. Those that had built of reserves of water were doing a thriving trade in the much-needed sunshine, though most were expected to close as stockpiled supplies ran out.

The first cracks also started appearing in the much-lauded community spirit. Police were forced to deal with reports of bowsers being vandalised while opportunist thieves tried to steal flood defences. Sir Nick Young, the chief executive of the British Red Cross, which has launched an appeal, said morale was in danger of collapsing. "You know, the Dunkirk spirit was very evident last night in the places that we visited, but it would be a miracle if it held up for 14 days."

More rain is forecast for today.

The main developments of the day

River Severn area

Flooding in the river Severn area appears to have passed its peak. In Gloucester, floodwater has receded, with levels falling by more than six inches in Tewkesbury. Electricity has been restored to 48,000 homes.

River Thames area

This is the main area of concern. Vulnerable towns include Henley, Reading, Marlow and Windsor. The peak in Pangbourne, Purley and Reading was expected early today. At risk are Datchet, Horton, Wraysbury, Cookham, Bisham and Hurley.

Drinking water

At least 350,000 people are without water. Severn-Trent Water said it would provide three million litres a day, and advised against panic buying. It could take up to two weeks to restore supplies.

Health warnings

Professor Kevin Kerr, consultant microbiologist and honorary clinical professor of microbiology, warned of gastro-related illness, vomiting and diarrhoea, although he said they would not necessarily be life threatening. He said people wading in floodwater should cover cuts.

Flood victims

A middle-aged man died yesterday in the Great Ouse, at Bedford. Mitchell Taylor, 19, from Tewkesbury has not seen since Saturday. A woman in Tewkesbury lost newborn twins despite being rescued.

Official responses

The Government last night pledged a further £10m, in addition to an initial £14m. The Queen has also sent a message of support. The Red Cross has launched an appeal.

    What lies beneath the floods, I, 25.7.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2798519.ece

Brown announces

extra cash for flooded areas

Published: 25 July 2007
PA
The Independent

The Prime Minister announced today that help for the flood-stricken areas of England is to be boosted to £46 million.

Mr Brown told the Commons at question time: "We have substantially raised the funds available so that local authorities are in a better position to respond."

He said infrastructure needs for the future would have to be looked at and warned that more would have to be invested to prevent floods in future.

Mr Brown, who is to visit the Gloucester-Tewkesbury areas later today, promised an extensive report on the situation later this year after the independent review.

The aftermath of recent storms dominated the last question time exchanges before the summer recess.

Tory leader David Cameron expressed sympathy for those hit by the floods and praised the emergency services.

He called for better co-ordination to prevent a repetition of the problem amid jeers of derision from Labour backbenchers, who taunted him for being out of the country on a visit to Rwanda over recent days.

David Drew, Labour MP for Stroud, told Mr Brown it "cannot be right" that his constituents had been told they faced a 14-day wait for water supplies to be restored.

Mr Brown said the Government was doing everything it could to get supplies restored as quickly as possible.

Mr Drew thanked ministers for their efforts and paid tribute to the emergency services for the "superb" work they had done.

"However, can it be right that we are being told that it will take 14 days to get back our main drinking supplies.

"There is great misinformation about who is currently off from the mains supply and who is likely to be off.

"Businesses, farms and individual households do want some certainty and it cannot be the case that we have to wait so long in this day and age."

The Severn Trent water company, he said, had to move quicker.

Mr Brown expressed sympathy for those in the area who had suffered "an enormous amount of inconvenience" and paid tribute to the police, fire services and army.

"You are right that the water station failed. You are right that we would like it back to use as quickly as possible.

"You are also right that all the civil engineering capacity that can be brought to bear, is being brought to bear, to stop a situation where the water works were polluted and there is a danger that the water would contaminate local people.

"We have made it clear to Severn water company that it has got to provide the bowsers for the area - 900 have already been provided, 900 will be provided in the next day.

"I think the company has discharged its duty in making sure that water is available. Obviously we want the water station back as quickly as possible.

"I will visit the area later today and I've invited the MPs for Gloucester and Tewkesbury to join me - and we will see at first hand how things are progressing.

"We will do everything we can to get supplies restored as quickly as possible."

    Brown announces extra cash for flooded areas, I, 25.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2800556.ece

'You can't stop it,

so you just get your stuff

out of the way'

Published: 25 July 2007
The New York Times
By Terri Judd

The pub sign of a snail inching towards Noah's Ark was a fitting emblem for the people of Wraysbury as they awaited the onslaught of the floods. The name was equally apt - The Perseverance.

Wraysbury Dive School may have been offering scuba lessons but no one seemed to be panicking yesterday. Most of the occupants of this quiet riverside community are seasoned flood veterans. Yet, even for them, something was strange about this latest crisis. It was the wrong season; they may be used to the Thames encroaching every so often, but not at the height of summer. "It is quite an odd feeling," said Tritia Tompkins. "My memories [of floods] are of quite frosty days in winter."

Wraysbury is no rural outpost but a Middlesex village under Heathrow's flight path. Yet yesterday it was on the Environment Agency's danger list, the most at-risk spot in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

Julia Bruzas had her canoe ready for the worst possible scenario. Her home, a countryside cottage beneath a windmill, had been swamped in 2003 and already the gentle stream beside it was gorged with fast-flowing water. "We are waiting for it to happen," said the 37-year-old caterer. "You can't stop it so you just prepare yourself and get your stuff out of the way."

At the nearby pub, the new managers Pete and Sandy Smith - flood novices compared to their neighbours - were watching with trepidation. "We are just hoping we only get a bit of it in the garden. Excuse the pun but we are banking on it not coming into the pub," said Pete. In the last major flood, four years ago, locals had to use boats to cross the cricket pitch yards away from the bar.

On Friary Island, flanked by the Thames and a canal, June Hendry, 73, was watching water engulf her garden and quietly thanking the surveyor who suggested building six feet higher when her home was gutted in the 2003 floods. Other homes nearby were not going to be so lucky. After four decades without a serious flood, she said, this was her third since the millennium: "The river is up three feet; it's terrible."

Local authorities are operating the Jubilee River Flood Alleviation Scheme and a self-help flood group is standing by. Sandbags have been distributed and everyone informed of the threat. Many residents, however, say the new Jubilee system is having a detrimental impact on smaller villages. A Horton and Wraysbury councillor, Colin Rayner, said: "This is not a time for blame. If you are on Titanic and you have hit an iceberg, you focus on getting everyone off before you shoot the captain."

    'You can't stop it, so you just get your stuff out of the way', I, 25.7.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2798520.ece

Flood victims told not to panic

as bowsers run dry

Heroic efforts to restore power praised
but sewage contamination threatens disease

Wednesday July 25, 2007
Guardian
Steven Morris, Rachel Williams and Karen McVeigh

Police, health experts and utility chiefs yesterday urged members of the public not to panic as concerns over water supply and sanitation escalated in the worst-hit flooding areas.

The number of homes facing a fortnight without water is expected to grow and people more than 40 miles away from Gloucester, at the centre of the disaster, have been asked to cut their water usage.

Although Severn Trent insisted there was enough to go round, many people in Gloucestershire complained that bottles of drinking water were not reaching them and bowsers - portable water containers - were running dry. Health chiefs were making contingency plans to deal with infections caused by the shortage of clean water and sewage mixing with river water and inundating homes and streets.

As the waters of the River Severn finally began to recede, Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, told MPs the government would top up the £14m flood recovery fund with a further £10m. He praised the "heroic" efforts of the armed forces in saving a power station from flooding but said the emergency was "not yet over".

A British Red Cross appeal for flood victims raised more than £300,000 in its first hour, with donations from Tesco, Halifax and GlaxoSmithKline, and £100,000 from the charity's disaster fund.

The Queen sent a message of support to victims of the floods and said she was "shocked and deeply concerned" by the extent of the damage.

After Monday night's operation to save Walham station, engineers restored power to 48,000 homes in Gloucester and Tewkesbury as Castle Meads sub-station was repaired. But the chief constable of Gloucestershire, Tim Brain, said the crisis was "effectively a wartime situation".

More than 250 soldiers and sailors are helping the emergency services, some of whom were said to be exhausted after weeks of floods. There are 700 firefighters working round-the-clock in Gloucestershire, where calls have totalled a quarter of the usual 8,000 a year.

Yesterday 140,000 homes in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury were still without tap water after the inundation of the Mythe treatment centre, near Tewkesbury. Supplies were being stretched at two other treatment plants, in the Forest of Dean and at Strensham, north of Bristol, threatening homes further afield.

Alan Payne, senior engineer at Severn Trent, asked people in Worcestershire and Warwickshire not to hoard water and to use as little as possible. "If people panic then there will be a knock-on effect."

Supported by military personnel, engineers were hoping to get into the swamped treatment centre yesterday. But it will be two weeks before it is operational again.

Mr Payne insisted there was water for everyone. Up to 3m bottles of drinking water were available each day and by this morning 900 bowsers were set to be on street corners. Eighty water tankers were keeping them topped up.

Still, in some places they ran out and volunteers began rationing supplies - two 1 litre bottles to households where young children and elderly people lived. Police supervised handing out of bottled water in the car park at Tesco in Quedgeley, Gloucester, as hundreds queued.

Some residents in Cheltenham complained supplies had been slow to reach them and the MP for Tewkesbury, Laurence Robertson, said villages in his constituency were short of clean water.

The director of public health at Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust, Shona Arora, said sanitation was becoming an issue. She urged residents not to put human waste into bins but only to flush when absolutely necessary.

Six severe flood warnings and 28 other flood warnings were still in place yesterday, and people in towns along the Thames valley were warned to expect further flooding. Possible heavy rain later in the week meant some flood warnings were likely to remain in place.

Three of the severe warnings apply to the Severn, at Gloucester, Tewkesbury, and between Tewkesbury and Worcester, and three in Oxfordshire, two on the Thames and one on the River Ock. Blackspots included Pangbourne, Purley and the Reading area, where the river was expected to peak at about 7am.

There were growing calls for the government to seek EU help, as Mr Benn faced more pressure to explain whether it had failed to implement successive reports proposing the Environment Agency take charge of all flooding responsibilities.

Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, said at least 25 official reports since 2000 had given warning on Britain's flood preparedness.

    Flood victims told not to panic as bowsers run dry, G, 25.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134046,00.html

Power station

'I was sure water and electricity don't mix,

but I didn't dwell on it'

Wednesday July 25, 2007
Guardian
Steven Morris

It was, according to the chief constable of Gloucestershire, Tim Brain, "a superhuman effort". For two days firefighters, military personnel and civilian engineers worked in murky, waist-deep water to prevent the Walham electricity substation in Gloucester going underwater and power being cut to a quarter of a million homes across the south-west.

In the end the water was just two inches away from the top of the makeshift barriers that they had built when the level stopped rising. Captain Mike Postgate, a Royal Marine, said: "We were confident that we would do it. It was just a matter of getting enough sand in there."

In the final four hours of the operation on Monday night the rescue workers loaded 36 tonnes of sand into bags, piling them against a temporary metal fence to keep the water out. They could hear hisses and buzzes as electricity met the river water but carried on regardless. "I did think at once that I was sure that water and electricity don't mix," said one worker. "But it didn't do to dwell on that."

Some of the rescuers also had to plunge under the water to locate manhole covers to help the water drain away. "The water was surprisingly warm," said Lieutenant Pamela Jackson, who is based on the assault ship HMS Ocean. "But the river water was mixed up with sewage which wasn't so pleasant."

Ocean has just returned from the Caribbean, where it took on anti-smuggling missions. "But the hurricanes didn't come out there," said Lt Jackson. "It's a bit of an irony that as soon as we got back we're up in Gloucestershire doing that sort of work."

As well as the sailors and marines, Gurkhas, Royal Engineers and members of the Royal Logistic Corps were involved in the operation. While they shored up the substation with sandbags, firefighters used eight huge pumps to flush out the water already in there. At the height of the operation 150 firefighters were at work on the site.

The waters stopped rising shortly before midnight on Monday.

It emerged yesterday that GCHQ, the government's high-tech listening post, is supplied by Walham electricity switching station. The news has led to speculation about the reason for the massive effort that went into saving it from the floods. But yesterday a spokesman for GCHQ said it had a back-up generator.

With experts unsure if the water level has peaked, Sarah Harris, a spokeswoman for the National Grid, which owns the Walham site, says they are "remaining watchful lest it rises again".

    'I was sure water and electricity don't mix, but I didn't dwell on it', G, 25.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2134047,00.html

9.45am

Power station saved

as floodwaters recede

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Weaver and agencies


A power station in Gloucestershire that supplies 500,000 homes has been saved from flooding after a major operation involving hundreds of firefighters and personnel, as the worst of the flooding appears to be over.

The situation was so critical last night that cabinet's emergency committee Cobra was warned the Walham substation was in danger of being swamped.

But the crisis was averted despite some breaches in the emergency flood defences erected last night.

Nick Windsor, the director of electricity transmission at National Grid Group, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The situation on site is stable currently because of the fantastic work done by hundreds of people from the fire brigades, army and navy to get up boundaries to stop floodwater coming into the site and bring in heavy pumping equipment to pump out water that did get in."

He added: "We have got some floodwater in there, which will need mopping up, but the power is fully on load at the moment."

There are still six severe flood warnings in place, down from eight. Three are on the river Severn, two on the Thames and one on the River Ock in Oxfordshire.

Waters peaked below danger levels in some of the areas worst hit, but hundreds of thousands of homes still remain without power and water.

The Environment Agency (EA) said the River Severn at Gloucester had peaked 50mm (2in) below the main quay wall, which protects the city centre.

"If the flood waters topped over the main quay wall, Gloucester city centre would be at serious risk of flooding, but it stopped short by 50mm," the spokesman Adrian Westwood said.

The agency said flooding overnight from the swollen river Thames in Oxford and Abingdon was less severe than predicted.

But it warned the forecast for unsettled weather over the next few days could cause more problems. More showers are predicted this week, with heavy rain on Thursday.

Around 350,000 homes were without running water and 50,000 were without power as the flooding crisis continued.

Severn Trent Water warned that some 150,000 households could be without water for up to two weeks because of the flooding of its treatment plant.

It said it had set up 400 bowsers, or mini water tankers, in locations in Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, and was handing out 1 million free bottles of water to residents.

A spokesman for the company urged people to only use the alternative water supplies for essentials purposes to ensure there was enough to go around.

With river levels "slowly" falling in the early hours, emergency services managed to restore electricity to more than 48,000 houses hit by the flooding of Castlemeads substation north of Gloucester.

The water levels of both the Thames and Severn have exceeded those of the floods in 1947.

Waters levels peaked on the Thames at Abingdon and Henley, with the highest levels at Oxford expected in the early hours of today.

Floods are expected to peak on the river Great Ouse at Bedford this morning and on the Thames at Reading in the early hours of tomorrow and Windsor on Thursday.

    Power station saved as floodwaters recede, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133463,00.html

Q&A:

What to do if your house is flooded

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Hilary Osborne

The floods that have cut off parts of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire and are a growing threat to Oxfordshire could affect up to 10,000 homes across the country, the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, warned yesterday. So what should you do if you are one of the victims?

There's water everywhere - what should I do?
Well, if your home is actually underwater it's too late to worry about saving existing items, but you can start thinking about what to do once the waters start to recede. Your first step should be to call your insurance company - most have 24-hour emergency helplines and are putting on extra staff to help deal with the increased volume of calls.

However, some companies are warning of delays and are urging homeowners unaffected by the floods to think twice before reporting claims for non-essential items so they can focus their attention on emergency cases. Direct Line, for example, has asked policyholders making accidental damage claims on household items to wait for a few days while it deals with flooding claims.

What if I can't find my policy document?
Don't panic - your insurer should be able to find you on its database. Look on its website or call a directory enquiries line to get its number. Remember that your building and contents cover may be with different companies so you may need to put in two calls. If you car is under water too, you will also have to call your motor insurance company. Bear in mind you will only be able to make a claim if you have fully comprehensive cover.

What should I do next?
If you are able to stay in your property but need help to prevent further damage, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) recommends you speak to your insurer before arranging emergency repairs, and that you keep any receipts for work done so you can claim for the cost. Where possible, take photographs to record the damage as this could help with your insurance claim.

Also remember that water and electricity don't mix, so make sure the electrics are checked out before you flick any switches - you should be able to claim for this on your buildings policy. Don't just throw things out, even if you think you will need to replace them. For example, you may be able to claim for new kitchen units if your current ones have soaked up water and are beyond repair, but you should try to dry them out and keep them until a loss adjuster has seen them.

A loss adjuster will be sent round by your insurer to assess what damage has been done and to work out how much your pay out should be. Insurers have sent teams of loss adjusters to the flooded areas, but they will be unable to visit homes until after the flood waters have receded.

What if I have had to leave my property?
In the first instance, you may have been moved to emergency shelter by the rescue services, but after that you may need to move somewhere else while work is done to make your house habitable again. Building and contents insurance will usually include provision for alternative accommodation if the damage is so great that you are unable to stay at home. If you have both types of policy, your building insurer will be expected to take care of your claim for somewhere to stay.

Most insurers will ask you to approve the accommodation with them before your stay begins. Sadly, they are unlikely to sanction a stay in the Ritz - alternative accommodation is supposed to be in keeping with your normal lifestyle, so for most people that will mean a standard hotel or B&B, at least in the short term.

Your policy is likely to have a limit on how much will be paid out for alternative accommodation - according to the ABI, this is typically around 20% of the sum insured. If you spend more than that, you will be liable for the cost.

What if I can't move back for a long time?
Insurers say some homeowners may not be able to move back into their properties before Christmas. The 20% limit stands, even if long-term shelter is needed, but if you don't want to stay in a hotel or B&B you should be able to arrange some accommodation that feels a bit more like home.

After the recent floods in Hull, many homeowners decided they would like to stay in mobile homes on their drives so they could still use the top floors of their homes and have easy access to anything they might need. This is an option, as is staying in a flat. "It is up to the individual policyholder what they want to do, and the insurance company will pay for it," says Kelly Ostler, a spokeswoman for the ABI. "It will either send you a cheque or pay for it directly."

And what if I have been burgled?
Sadly, empty homes and cars seem to be a temptation for looters, so if you are forced to leave your property you should do your best to secure it. Unfortunately, if you leave in a hurry and don't lock your doors or windows then you will not be able to claim for any items that are stolen.

"There has to be a break in for a claim to be successful - it's exactly the same as if there isn't a flood," says Ostler. If your home has been broken into, your insurer will pay for the missing items as well as those damaged by the floodwater.

When will I receive a pay out?
It could take months for insurers to process claims and arrange payouts, but some are offering interim payments to help people buy essentials. NFU Mutual, for example, is giving immediate payments of £500 to help policyholders with short-term expenses.

Direct Line is also offering interim payments, but warns that getting a loss adjuster to a property may take at least five days, while a full settlement may take months. Spokeswoman, Emma Holyer, says: "The worst thing to do is to make a quick payment because the property could be much more badly damaged than is obvious at first."

Will I be able to get cover again?
Insurers have said they will carry on offering flood cover to as many homeowners as possible, and many have said they will allow customers to renew existing cover. The problem may come if you try to shop around, as no insurer is obliged to take your business. You may be offered a policy that would pay out in other circumstances, but not if you end up under water again, which will be little comfort when you know how disruptive a flood can be.

If you stay with your existing insurer you could find that when you come to renew your policy your premiums have risen, and other terms such as the level of excess have changed. If this is the case you should shop around for a new policy, but you may find you have little choice but to pay up.

    Q&A: What to do if your house is flooded, G, 24.7.2007, http://money.guardian.co.uk/insurance_/home/story/0,,2133625,00.html

A 21st century catastrophe

Published: 24 July 2007
The Independent
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
 

Flood-ravaged Britain is suffering from a wholly new type of civil emergency, it is clear today: a disaster caused by 21st-century weather.

This weather is different from anything that has gone before. The floods it has caused, which have left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than £2bn worth of damage - and are still not over - have no precedent in modern British history.

Nothing in the past hundred years, in terms of flooding caused by rainfall, has been as bad. According to the Environment Agency, even the previous worst case, the extensive floods of spring 1947, which were aggravated by the vast snow melt that followed an exceptionally hard winter, has been surpassed.

"We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before," said the agency yesterday. "The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it." And the 1947 floods were said to have been the worst for 200 years.

Most remarkable of all is the fact that the astonishing picture the nation is now witnessing - whole towns cut off, gigantic areas underwater, mass evacuations, infrastructure paralysed and grotesquely swollen rivers, from the Severn and the Thames downwards not even at their peaks yet - has all been caused by a single day's rainfall. A month's worth and more in an hour. It is obvious that the Government and the civil powers, from Gordon Brown down to the emergency services, are struggling to cope, not only with the sheer physical scale of the disaster itself, but with the very concept of it. It is entirely unfamiliar. It is new. Yet it is exactly what has been forecast for the past decade and more.

No one can yet attribute the flood events of the past week, or indeed, those of June, when Yorkshire suffered what Gloucestershire and Worcestershire are suffering now - again from one single day's rainfall - directly to global warming. All climates have a natural variability which includes exceptional occurrences.

But the catastrophic "extreme rainfall events" of the summer of 2007, on 24 June and 20 July, are entirely consistent with repeated predictions of what climate change will bring.

It is nearly 10 years since the scientists of the UK Climate Impacts Programme first gave their detailed forecast of what global warming had in store for Britain in the 21st century - and high up on the list was rainfall, increasing both in frequency and intensity.

This was thought most likely to happen in winter, with summers predicted to be hotter and dryer. But yesterday Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, an author of a new scientific paper linking increases in rainfall to climate change, commented: "It is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying."

The paper by Dr Stott and other authors, reported in The Independent yesterday, detects for the first time a "human fingerprint" in rainfall increases in recent decades in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere - that is, it finds they were partly caused by global warming, itself caused by emissions of greenhouse gases.

The public as a whole appears not to have taken the extreme rainfall predictions on board, thinking of climate change in terms of hotter weather. But the science community has been fully aware of it, and has steadily reinforced the warnings.

One of the most important came from a group of experts commissioned to look at the risks by the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, under the Government's Foresight Programme, in 2004. Their report, Future Flooding, said that unless precautions were taken, more severe floods brought about by climate change could massively increase the number of people and the amount of property at risk. Yet once again, this hardly penetrated the public consciousness.

Amidst all the news of communities being overwhelmed by water yesterday, one very significant announcement, from Gordon Brown and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn, was that the Government is setting up an independent inquiry to look at the flood events of June and July.

Its report will be immensely important and may prove a milestone in terms of the British public's appreciation of the reality of climate change. It will doubtless focus on the key problem in terms of flood response - there is no one minister, or other person, in overall charge - but it may also take a view of the disaster in terms of global warming, and may well come to the conclusion that we are already witnessing the future. The floods of 2007 may eventually be regarded as a wake-up call to the warming climate's rapidly approaching effects.

Nobody saw them coming. But that appears to be the way of a changing climate. In April 1989 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, gave her Cabinet a seminar on global warming at No 10 and one of the speakers was the scientist and green guru James Lovelock. A reporter asked him afterwards what would be the first signs of global warming. He replied: "Surprises." Asked to explain, he said: "The hurricane of October 1987 was a surprise, wasn't it? There'll be more."

The floods of 2007 were a surprise as well, and if Dr Lovelock is right, there'll be more of them too. Welcome to the weather of the 21st century.

The flood of 1947

The Great Flood of 1947, the previous worst inundation caused by rainfall in Britain, swamped almost all of the rivers in the South, Midlands and the North-east, submerged 700,000 acres of land and caused an estimated £4bn worth of damage (in today's money).

The deluge was predominantly caused by the rapid thaw of snow and ice that had covered much of England after a particularly long and cold winter. The weather patterns that caused the thaw also caused a number of torrential downpours, exacerbating the flooding.

The timing could not have been worse; Britain was still recovering from the war. Rationing was harsh, deprivation widespread and the economy was teetering. What made the catastrophe even more unfortunate was that it occurred before the era of flood insurance.

The flooding started across the South, from Somerset to Kent, as many rivers broke their banks. By 14 March, parts of west and north-east London had been submerged. The next day, the river Thames overflowed its banks at Caversham, near Reading, and around the Lea Valley to the east of London.

By the end of the month, an estimated 100 000 homes had been flooded, hundreds of thousands of people displaced and the year's crops largely wiped out.

    A 21st century catastrophe, I, 24.7.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2795635.ece

Geoffrey Lean:

Get used to floods

- the worst is yet to come

It is salutary that Gordon Brown has been faced with a climate-driven crisis so early in his premiership

Published: 24 July 2007
The Independent

If there is one thing we Britons should surely be able to cope with, it's the rain. We may be wearily resigned to the apparent inability of the nation that invented the steam engine to run a railroad. We may, perhaps, be persuaded by successive governments that our public services are continually in need of "reform". We may even believe that we can excuse being caught unawares, as last year, by drought. But this damp island, slap in the path of the wet westerlies, is awfully used to getting a drenching.

Yet here we are, after a few days of heavy downpours, bang in the middle of a national crisis. The rains brought transport to a standstill. A whole town is cut off by water from the rest of the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost or may lose their water supplies. Hundreds of thousands more face losing electric power. And we are told that the worst is yet to come.

Things have changed - and we have been caught out because we were not prepared ... We have, of course, had severe floods before; the worst killed 2,000 people when the Severn burst its banks in 1606, while an area the size of Kent was inundated across the country in the spring of 1947. But they have become more frequent - more than doubling over the past century.

This is mainly down to the weather. We are used to miserable summers - but this month is expected to be the wettest-ever July, following the wettest-ever June. We have also experienced torrential rains before - in July 1955 an unmatched 10 inches fell in Martinstown, Dorset, in just 24 hours. But these, too, are becoming more common.

Research at Newcastle University last year concluded that downpours have become twice as intense over the past 40 years, and that the worst come four times more often. And the Environment Agency predicts that heavy rainfall will become three or four times more common in coming decades, increasing flooding tenfold.

This is only to be expected as the world heats up, injecting more energy in the climatic system and evaporating more water from the sea. As The Independent reported yesterday, a new scientific paper will tomorrow firmly make the link between heavier rainfall and global warming.

The more precipitous the downpour, the less chance the rain has to be absorbed by the ground and vegetation, and the more likely it is to race down drains and into rivers, making them overflow. We have made this worse by paving over more and more of the countryside for housing, roads - and even driveways and garden patios.

This is the second thing that has changed over the past decades. We have built over a great deal more land. And that has not merely made flooding worse but aggravated its effects, by putting homes right in the way of the rising waters.

Half of all housing built in Britain since the Second World War - covering a total area the size of the West Midlands - has been sited on land prone to flooding. Councils and ministers have constantly disregarded warnings from the Environment Agency about unwise developments. The consequences are plain to see; most of the houses inundated in this summer's floods have been relatively new, erected in the wrong place.

Yet, even now, nearly one in every six new buildings is being placed in flood zones - and present plans suggest that this will rise to almost one in three between 2016 and 2021. The Association of British Insurers wants houses planned for much of the Thames Gateway to have their living areas on the first floor to keep them dry.

To compound the danger, successive governments have neglected Britain's flood defences. A report by the National Audit Office last month concluded that only 57 per cent of them - and just 46 per cent of those most important ones, such as those protecting towns, are in good condition.

Worse, ministers have consistently refused to give the Environment Agency the money it needs to build enough new ones, causing vital schemes to be delayed for years. Last year, they even cut the budget. In the wake of this summer's floods they have increased it by a third; but this won't take effect until 2010 and will still fall far short of what is required.

All these factors mean that the number of British homes at risk of flooding is projected to rise from two million to 3.5 million over coming decades.

Of course, global warming is the most important of these factors. If the climate were not changing, it could be argued that it would be wrong to build costly defences against rare events, and we might have got away with building on flood plains. But the increased flooding that will accompany a warmer world makes a change of course imperative.

Perhaps it is salutary that Gordon Brown should be confronted with a climate-driven crisis so early in his premiership, for he has so far shown little sign that he has fully grasped the importance of global warming. He looked decidedly uncomfortable having to devote most of his first prime ministerial press conference to the floods yesterday. He may care to remember that it was the flooding of New Orleans that first put the skids under President Bush, and to reflect that how he copes with the downpour - and addresses the climate change that brought it - will affect those vital first impressions of his own reign.

Geoffrey Lean is environment editor of The Independent on Sunday

    Geoffrey Lean: Get used to floods - the worst is yet to come, I, 24.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2795649.ece

Ministers under fire

as experts warn of worse to come

Published: 24 July 2007
The Independent
By Martin Hickman, Andrew Grice and Colin Brown

The greatest flooding of modern times was predicted to worsen today as rivers burst their banks and deluged more people, buildings and countryside with storm water and sewage.

As water invaded hundreds of homes and left 350,00 without basic supplies yesterday, the Environment Agency warned overflowing rivers would swell further in the coming 72 hours.

The River Severn, which has left Gloucester resembling a ghost town, and the River Great Ouse threatening Bedford, are set to reach maximum flow this morning. Last night Walham power station, which serves half a million homes, escaped flood water from the Severn by two inches.

In Oxford where a football stadium has been turned into emergency accommodation for residents the Thames still had to reach its peak. The river will be at its height at Reading tomorrow morning and at Windsor on Thursday.

Closer to the capital, rising waters may threaten Shepperton. The damage from the flooding could top £2bn. At Westminster, ministers came under fire from opposition parties over the failure of the Environment Agency to install defences in areas known to be at risk.

Gordon Brown defended the agency at Downing Street after visiting some of the flood-hit areas. The Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced a full independent inquiry. He told the House of Commons: "I must emphasise that this emergency is far from over. Further flooding is very likely as the Thames and the Severn fill with floodwater from within their catchments."

The inquiry will look at the impact of the changing weather for coastal and river flood defences and drainage systems, whether the bodies involved should be better co-ordinated and the siting of water and power works.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, said it was " daft" for ministers to go back to square one because a review only three years ago had recommended the agency be given an over-arching role in handling floods. The idea had been accepted by the Government but not implemented.

Yesterday, the Environment Agency had 50 flood warnings and eight severe weather warnings in force; four on the Severn, three on the Thames and one on the Great River Ouse.

After touring Gloucestershire, Mr Brown said "19th century" infrastructure was having to cope with a level of rainfall expected only once in every 150 years.

Denying that flood defence budgets had been cut, he insisted that spending had already doubled to £600m and would rise to £800m, with further increases if necessary. "Like every advanced industrialised country, we are coming to terms with the issues surrounding climate change," he said.

    Ministers under fire as experts warn of worse to come, I, 24.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2795658.ece

Ministers warned three years ago

over flood defence failings

Water levels still rising
as thousands hit by worst floods in modern British history

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour and Karen McVeigh


The government has been accused of failing to act on its own advice to overhaul UK flood defences and drainage systems which first highlighted deep-seated problems three years ago.

As large tracts of central and southern England remained under water, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power or drinking water, the environment minister, Hilary Benn, announced an independent review into what is being billed as the worst episode of flooding in modern British history.

But it emerged last night that the government was warned in two separate reports that the plans in place to tackle flood risks were "complex, confusing and distressing for the public". In July 2004 the government said it needed to improve coordination between water companies, councils and the Environment Agency; then in 2005, the government also agreed to "work towards giving" the agency "an overarching strategic overview across all flooding and coastal erosion risks".

Ministers promised to transfer this responsibility by 2006.

An analysis by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has concluded that the current divisions of tasks lead to:

· A lack of information for those affected by flooding, with people passed between organisations and no one taking responsibility.

· Insufficient risk assessment because no single organisation has the incentive to carry it out.

· Development planning decisions being taken without a full understanding of the risks of urban flooding.

· Separate organisations making investment decisions based on priorities in their own area of responsibility without considering the wider drainage issues.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said: "The government has been looking at an integrated approach for more than three years, but did not act on its own analysis in 2005. Ministers have been in and out of the revolving door at the department, and now we are to have another review to look at exactly the same issues again."

The concerns were raised as the Environment Agency warned the crisis would worsen and persist for at least another 24 hours.

Eight severe warnings remained in place covering the rivers Thames, Severn and Ouse, in particular for the towns of Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Oxford, Abingdon, Reading and Bedford, amid the worst flooding in 60 years. Fifty other flood warnings were in place across England and Wales.

So far up to 350,000 homes have lost, or are at risk of losing, water supplies in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham as a result of flooding of the Mythe treatment plant, which remains out of action.

The water company Severn Trent sent more than 400 mini-tankers of water to areas in Gloucestershire. It handed out 150,000 litres of bottled water at various places in the area. Emergency services ferried in bottled supplies to trapped residents. Each "at risk" person has been given three days' supply. The company asked for water to be used sparingly.

A total of 45,000 homes were without power, including at Castle Mead and Tewkesbury, after an electricity substation was turned off due to the rising water.

Mr Benn told the Commons up to 10,000 homes have been, or could be, flooded across the country, and 200,000 homes face losing power if Walham switching station in Gloucester is flooded. Armed forces were drafted in to help fire service and Environment Agency staff build a temporary barrier around the site and start pumping out 45cm (18in) of floodwater. The situation remained "serious".

The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield, Berkshire, was also flooded but there has been no escape of radioactive materials.

After visiting Gloucester, Gordon Brown used his first monthly press conference to link the situation to climate change and pledged to invest in coastal and flood defences. The government has promised an extra £200m to the Environment Agency over the next three years to improve flood defences, but the agency has said that £1bn a year is needed.

    Ministers warned three years ago over flood defence failings, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133420,00.html

Delays and shortages

as claims bill exceeds £2bn

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Miles Brignall


Insurers were yesterday warning those affected by the flooding that they face a long wait to make their homes habitable, as the industry is still struggling to cope with last month's unprecedented deluge.

With the total payout due to summer flooding likely to be more than £2bn, insurers were bringing in extra staff and ordering specialist equipment from Italy and the US to deal with a new round of claims. The Association of British Insurers originally predicted a flooding bill of £1.5bn, but that was before the rains on Friday. "It's clear this weekend's events will add several hundred million pounds to that total," said a spokeswoman.

The ABI said about 93% of homeowners have buildings and contents cover, but up to a quarter of all those in rented homes were uninsured. It said it was too soon to say if premiums would have to rise. Insurers paid out £1.3bn for flooding in 2000, but premiums had remained static.

David Stoddard, head of customer service at Lloyds TSB Insurance, said the industry was "already showing some signs of strain" before the latest torrential rain. "It's clear we are now going to be fighting on several fronts. The demand for alternative accommodation is already outstripping supply," he said.

"There are real shortages of vital equipment, and the number of available contractors is shortening daily. We are moving staff from other areas on the business to deal with claims, and contractors are coming in from other areas. But we will manage."

Norwich Union, Britain's largest insurer, said staff were similarly making their way to the affected areas to be present as the waters recede. "We are bracing ourselves for the next wave of claims. Only once we are able to get claims staff inside the affected homes will we be in a position to say how bad things are," said senior claims manager Jason Harris.

Insurance assessors were predicting yesterday that shortages of vital equipment would delay building work.

All Seasons Hire, based in Hampshire, said dehumidifiers used to dry homes were already in short supply.

"We ran out three weeks ago, but the phones have been going mad. We're importing new models from Italy in a bid to meet demand," said a spokeswoman.

Meanwhile motor insurers were also bracing themselves for a big increase in claims. The ABI said people with third party, fire and theft cover are not insured if floodwater wrecks their car.

    Delays and shortages as claims bill exceeds £2bn, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133317,00.html

'We just want it to stop.

Please let it stop'

Power cuts, deluged homes
and queues for bottled water in swamped Gloucester

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Steven Morris


Leia Rosenberg and her 10-year-old son, Connor, surveyed the remains of their kitchen in the Longlevens area of Gloucester, reduced to a soggy, smelly wreck for the second time this summer.

"We had just dried out from when we flooded last month. Now we have got to start the whole thing again - the insurance claims, the mopping up, the drying out. It's so very depressing. It was bad last time, it's just awful this. I could cry."

A mile away in Sandhurst Lane, nine-year-old Sarah Royles could not stop her tears. She and her seven-month-old cousin, Montana, were plucked from their home by firefighters as the water lapped into their living room. "I was so scared. I can't really swim," sobbed Sarah. "The water was so deep, it was horrible. I never want to go back there."

In the sunshine on Sunday many of those caught as the river Severn burst its banks were enjoying the adventure. By yesterday the mood was much more sombre as the extent of the floods became clear.

The towns of Upton upon Severn in Worcestershire and Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire were still ringed with brown, muddy water but attention switched to the city of Gloucester, where hundreds of homes were flooded and the misery of residents was compounded by cuts to the power and water supplies.

Scores of people, young and old, were rescued by boat and helicopter, while others refused to leave even though their taps had run dry and they were left without lights or heating, worrying that their homes would be looted if they deserted them.

In Alney Terrace, close to the city centre, Dave and his friends, were sipping beer as they sat knee-deep in flood water. "I know it's a miserable thought, but I reckon if we go, this place will be ransacked. So we're staying put," he said.

And still the water continued to rise, threatening to engulf homes and businesses in the historic dock area and the city centre itself, a ghost town yesterday with most shops and businesses closed.

Police emphasised that the water would not reach its peak until today and their focus was still on making sure people were safe rather than recovering from the devastation.

An extraordinary day began with a visit by the prime minister. Gordon Brown's helicopter flew over some of the affected areas and he spent more than an hour at Gloucestershire police's headquarters speaking to the teams coordinating the rescue efforts. But the chief constable, Tim Brain, advised him not to go into the city centre, less than 10 minutes away, for fear he would get stuck.

Not everyone was impressed. Dave Smith, 34, helping a friend mop out his house near the city centre, said: "He ought to have come and spoken to some of the people affected. Of course it's tricky to get around because there's lots of water here. That's the point."

While Mr Brown was being briefed, half a mile away at the Tesco car park in Quedgeley the first of the lorry-loads of bottled water brought in for people whose taps had run dry was running out. People were asked to take only six bottles but many kept returning for more until their cars were full. "It's every man for himself," said Gemma, 34. "I've got two boys and a husband to look after. We need all the water we can get."

A second lorry was many hours away - and those who had missed out were forced to join a long queue to try to buy water from Tesco, in darkness because of the power cut.

Severn Trent tried to stop the panic, sending more than 300 bowsers - portable water tanks - to the county. But most were sent to the city centre and residents of some outlying areas complained they had been left out. Not only were they without drinking water but they were not able to flush toilets, let alone wash. By yesterday evening, many of the bowsers were also running dry.

The lack of water and power was most critical for the very young and very old. Trinity Church hall in Longlevens was opened as a refuge for mothers struggling to feed children and elderly people who were not able to cook themselves a hot meal or even make a cup of tea.

Heroics were performed by 250 military and emergency service personnel to prevent the Walham substation in Gloucester from being overwhelmed. Firefighters and soldiers had to wade through waist-deep water then dive to reach manhole covers.

Last night, crowds of people gathered on Westgate Bridge to survey the scene. "It's surreal, isn't it?" said Rob Green. "It's just water as far as you can see. The worrying thing is, the water's still rising. They're talking about evacuating people to Bristol or Birmingham now. We just want it to stop. Please let it stop."

    'We just want it to stop. Please let it stop', G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133305,00.html

Going under

Britain is world-renowned for its depressingly damp climate. We are used to suffering week upon week of rain. So why have a few heavy showers caused such devastation around the country this summer? Aida Edemariam reports

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Aida Edemariam


Anyone attempting to take a train to or from the southwest of England this weekend could be forgiven for wondering if they had accidentally strayed on to the set of a disaster movie - or perhaps an episode of the BBC's recent exercise in futurology, If. Trains appeared on boards and then simply vanished. Announcers on the London Underground pronounced litanies of lines progressively going out of service. As for those who had to watch their homes and businesses succumb to the rising tide, among them there was a general sense of disbelief. Disbelief that a downpour so short should wreak such havoc, disbelief that such scenes should be occurring at all.

The disbelief is justified. This, after all, is a country famed for its wetness. Rain is our national weather. Snow - well, we all know what happens when Britain is dusted with a few millimetres of snow. Excessive heat, like last summer's, causes difficulties, too - but rain? Given our extensive experience, surely we should lead the world in rain management.

Alas, it seems not. Thousands had to be evacuated over the weekend, thousands more are trapped in their homes. That's thousands to add to those still unable to go home after floods in the north of England last month, which killed eight people - and untold millions to add to a national insurance bill eventually expected to top £2.5bn. Evesham, in Worcestershire, the worst-hit town this weekend, experienced floods of up to 16 feet. And it isn't over yet: at the time of going to press there were warnings that flood waters weren't expected to peak until tonight, and Oxford and Bedford and Gloucestershire were bracing themselves to be the next major areas hit. All are entitled to ask how such relatively short bursts of rain - just one hour in London, somewhat longer in places such as Oxfordshire - could have such devastating results.

In fact, the answer lies partly in how quickly it all happened. Brize Norton in Oxfordshire received 121.2mm of rain between midnight Thursday and 5pm Friday - a sixth of what it would expect for the whole year. South Yorkshire got a month's worth of rain on June 25. "It's extremely unusual to have such a high depth of rainfall in such a short duration," says professor Adrian Saul, research director of the Pennine Water Group at Sheffield University, an expert in urban drainage systems and one of the authors of the 2004 Flood and Coastal Defence Project, the most wide-ranging analysis of future flood risk ever conducted in the UK. He also points out that prevailing pressure systems have been dropping rain on to the country for weeks now, "and the ground is very wet, so immediately you get rainfall, you get runoff".

It isn't just a case of the ground not being able to absorb so much so fast - drainage systems can't either, and have simply been overwelmed. "When you design a system you have to take a level of risk, and generally the level of risk is sufficient to protect our communities," says Saul. "But once the design criteria have been beaten, the systems become overwhelmed and the defences are overtopped. It's very fortunate that the Victorians built the systems as big as they did. In London in particular, [they] had the foresight to see that there would be change and it's protected London ever since." Which is, of course, impressive, and true, but it is also true that they were built when London's population was a quarter of what it is now - and last Friday, they simply didn't hold up.

"Our sewers are not designed to deal with that capacity of water flowing through them," says Nicola Savage, a spokeswoman for Thames Water. They are also not designed for the way we currently treat them. We each, personally, use far more water than ever before. There is also "a tendency for the public to use the sewers as a litter bin," Savage adds. People flush nappies down toilets, sanitary products, tights; in particular "we need to encourage people not to be pouring stuff down the sink - for example, fat, oil and grease. The sewers were never designed to cope with this sort of material. They were only ever designed for rainwater and foul water." Fat, liquid when it's hot and poured away by fast-food outlets, for example, coagulates as it cools. "Increasingly, our sewer flushers' time is being taken up clearing deposits of fat, oil and grease out of the sewers, which is obviously impeding the free flow of liquid through them," says Savage. The arteries of the city of London, it seems, are furred with cholesterol, and its citizens are suffering the consequences.

Thames Water says that it is spending £323m upgrading its sewers but, as Dr Jean Venables, chief executive of the Association of Drainage Operators, puts it, carefully, large-scale investment in sewers has not generally been the order of the day in this country. "There is a need for the water companies to be allowed ... to invest not only in replacing the drains because they've come to the end of their life, but also to extend the system to cope with the new development that's taking place, and our increased use of water. Until recently, Ofwat [the economic regulator for the water and sewerage industry in England and Wales] has been reluctant to allow very much investment by water companies, because they wanted to keep water bills down."

Partly as a result of his work on the Foresight report, Saul has for the past three years been involved in £5.6m project called the Flood Risk Management Research Consortium, which is attempting to come up with both short- and long-term solutions to a problem that climate change means will only get worse. Saul manages research into urban flood risk and is attempting to come up with mathematical models that might predict the potent interactions of surface, sewer and river flows that cause urban flash floods - "trying to better understand how we can manage the floods, channel them away from urban areas".

But overloaded urban drainage systems are only one of a complex set of reasons why we have been overwhelmed with water. The consortium is also looking into land use management - essentially, how farmers can control the flow of water off land, which can be affected by all sorts of things. The direction a farmer ploughs, for example - if he or she goes across hills rather down them - can decrease runoff. Strategically placed trees can trap it. Stocking levels can be adjusted: the more animals there are on a piece of land, the more they pack the ground down, and the less able it is to absorb water. "Stocking densities and drainage patterns have been changed already [in response to the floods in the north in June]," says Dr Venables, "particularly in upland areas." Unfortunately, this hasn't happened soon enough to avoid "a considerable amount of crop damage". At the moment farmers in some areas can't access their crops to see if they might be salvageable, and "that's going to be showing up very quickly in our shops". This weekend the RSPCA spoke of growing fears for intensively farmed animals - no drinking water for 48 hours will mean widespread livestock death, which might also in turn affect the price of food.

The consortium, which will learn in the next week or so whether it has secured more funding with which to continue its work, is also looking at the infrastructure of British rivers - whether embankments are high enough, whether there are ways to divert floods when they occur - and attempting to use modelling to predict how floods move and change the landscape. (When a river floods, for example, the topograpy of the river bed changes, and thus the behaviour of the river changes.) It is also looking at small-scale ways in which individuals can help reduce a problem that, in fact, they have helped create: adding extensions to houses, paving driveways, car parks - all of this activity decreases the amount of soft ground that water can disappear into, and increases the amount of runoff into drains and rivers. "In essence, the latest thinking is that anything that runs off the house should be stored locally," says Saul. This can mean rainwater harvesting systems, which ensure that rainfall doesn't go straight into the sewerage system; it can be collected - in storage tanks under driveways, for example - and used to flush toilets or run washing machines or regulate the sewerage system. Small trenches called soakaways can be dug in gardens and filled with stones, which trap the water and release it into the ground a bit more slowly. Every little helps.

For the fact remains that while what Britain has experienced over the past month is, as experts keep pointing out, a series of freak weather events, our changing climate means that there may well be more of them, more frequently. Today Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire are having to rush to the barricades, to get out the sandbags and evacuate the citizens. Tomorrow, next month, next year - who knows?

    Going under, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133230,00.html

Sodden Oxfordshire

is braced for worse to come

· 41 roads expected to flood as run-off swells rivers
· Residents refuse to leave homes for fear of looting

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Rachel Williams

Oxfordshire was bracing itself for the fallout from the weekend's torrential rain last night as vast quantities of water running off the land swept along the swollen Thames, threatening to burst its banks.

Abingdon, where householders have already suffered flooding from the River Ock, emerged as a likely crisis point, with residents evacuated or trying to safeguard their homes under threatening grey skies.

The Thames rose three feet (0.9 metres) in less than 12 hours in the historic town yesterday and was expected to reach its peak overnight. Oxfordshire council said 41 roads were likely to flood, and some holidaymakers stranded on narrow boats for days, including a man who had run out of essential medication, were rescued by fire crews in dinghies amid fears the swollen waters would break their moorings.

By yesterday afternoon residents were reporting difficulties getting hold of sandbags, with lorries bringing further supplies being besieged. "A lorry pulled up with a couple of pallets of sandbags and within seconds they were all gone," one man said. "There's no such thing as an orderly queue at the moment."

Another resident, Ernie Russell, said he had seen some panic buying at the town's convenience stores, people leaving with several loaves of bread and crates of bottled water.

Fifty people from retirement flats overlooking the Ock and a care home in Abingdon were moved on Sunday to Oxford's Kassam Stadium and sleeping at a neighbouring hotel. The stadium was stocked with food and bedding for up to 1,500 people as authorities prepared to take in residents from around the county.

On Abingdon's Ladygrove Estate, where grimy tide marks on doors and walls revealed the extent of the flooding at the weekend, residents surveyed lapping water that seemed to be rising again, then set about barricading their doors with sandbags, plastic sheets and bricks.

They had been told evacuation might be necessary, but Helen Bennett, whose carpets, washing machine, tumble dryer and freezer were ruined by weekend floods, said she was determined not to leave for fear of losing more possessions to looters.

In Abingdon town centre, an architect, Mike Cleary, employed a builder to seal his front door with spray foam and block up drill holes in bricks with plastic sealant. "I have a friend who ... told me sandbags are no use," he said.

The Environment Agency said the Thames was not expected to reach the levels it did in the 1947 floods in Abingdon and Oxford, but could be worse than in 2003.

    Sodden Oxfordshire is braced for worse to come, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133122,00.html

Houses can be built on flood plains,

minister insists

Tuesday July 24, 2007
Guardian
Tania Branigan, political correspondent

The waters inundating swaths of central and western England are no reason to block urgently needed new homes, including developments built on flood plains, the housing minister said yesterday.

Yvette Cooper warned critics not to "play politics" with the floods as she unveiled the green paper on housing, which promises £8bn of investment in affordable housing and explains how the government will build 3m more homes by 2020. She warned that without action housing could become one of the greatest sources of social inequality.

A broad coalition - including council leaders, unions and housing campaigners - welcomed the commitment to increase the supply of homes, but questioned whether the government had pledged enough money for affordable accommodation.

Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that development had always taken place on flood plains and that the key was proper planning and protection. Rules were toughened last year.

She said: "I don't think that misinformation being used just to whip up hostility against housing is fair on those people who desperately need affordable housing now."

The Lib Dem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, said it was extraordinary not to reconsider development on flood plains, and Grant Shapps, shadow housing minister, accused Labour of building "the sink estates of tomorrow".

He said: "Labour's Whitehall planning targets, imposed on local communities with the threat of financial penalties on top, threaten to increase the likelihood of flooding."

Speaking in the Commons later, Ms Cooper warned that demand was outstripping supply and said the government wanted decent homes "for the many, not the few". She pledged that at least 70,000 affordable houses a year would be built by 2010-11, including 45,000 social homes; more than double the amount built in 2004. The government will also invest an additional £300m in transport infrastructure.

It will crack down on councils which resist development and developers who buy land but hold off building because they hope property values will rise.

A new grant will reward local authorities which find suitable sites and deliver new housing. But the green paper warns: "Where councils have not identified enough land, planning inspectors will be more likely to overturn their decisions and give housing applications the go ahead on appeal ... The secretary of state will not hesitate to use her powers to recover planning appeals and take decisions herself."

Councils will be encouraged to build housing themselves because in future they will be able to keep full rents from the new homes they build and get all the cash back if the homes are sold to tenants. Shared ownership schemes will be expanded for those seeking to climb on to the property ladder.

Two-thirds of the homes will be built on brownfield sites and spare public sector land will be used where possible; the Ministry of Defence has already identified six sites with the potential for 7,000 homes.

Ms Cooper said houses should be more environmentally friendly and better designed in future. The green paper asks for bids from councils and developers to host five new zero-carbon "eco-towns".

But the Local Government Association warned that reaching affordable housing targets would take at least £11.6bn, not £8bn, and the National Housing Federation described the government's calculations as "dangerously wrong".

Sir Simon Milton, chair of the LGA, praised the government for giving councils greater freedom to provide affordable homes. But he added: "It is important that densely populated areas are not penalised just because they have less land for development."

The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "The new government deserves congratulations not just for the contents of today's green paper but also for putting housing once again at the top of the political agenda ... Too many responses to today's plans will say we need more homes, but not round here ... If we are to build new eco-towns and achieve the other targets set out today then ministers will have to tackle the Nimbys."

At a glance

· Three million new homes to be built by 2020 (two million by 2016).

· A housing grant and infrastructure fund to encourage developments.

· Two-thirds of all new homes to be built on brownfield land.

· Councils to create new local housing companies to use their own land.

· All new homes zero-carbon from 2016. Developers to bid for five new eco-towns of up to 20,000 homes.

· £8bn investment towards 45,000 more social homes a year by 2010-11, plus 25,000 shared ownership.

· Councils to keep full rents from new homes and cash from sales.

· Affordable homes in rural areas.

· A review of shared equity products for first-time buyers and a new 17.5% government loan for key workers.

    Houses can be built on flood plains, minister insists, G, 24.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2133392,00.html

‘We have to protect the things we love.

We’re staying put’

The river is rising and swimming costumes are ready.
Our correspondent finds resolute residents
beside the Thames in Abingdon

July 24, 2007
From The Times
Lucy Bannerman

Jan Ulyatt has taken off her wellingtons to dismantle the grandfather clock. She and her husband, Brian, have only six hours left to barricade their listed home on the banks of the River Thames in Abingdon against the waters that are getting nearer and nearer to their oak-panelled living room.

The 15th-century converted malt house, which they share with another family, is one of more than 400 vulnerable properties in Oxfordshire that have been placed on red alert as the floodwaters continue the surge downstream. With sandbags in place, carpets rolled up and the clock dismantled, the Ulyatts can only wait.

“If there’s more than a few feet of water, it’s going to come in,” said Mrs Ulyatt, a retired teacher, her eyes fixed on the floodline. “Unless it surges up the slipway, in which case it will come at us in all directions.”

Their home, which was renovated less than three years ago, lies in what is — in drier times — an enviable position metres from the river bank. The steps that usually lead from their garden to the river could no longer be seen. The weeping willow sagged under the weight of its submerged branches and the river rose perilously close to their home.

There was limited relief last night when the Environment Agency said at about 11pm that waters had peaked in both Abingdon and Henley. But nobody was letting their guard down.

The homes of all 12 local firefighters have already been flooded after the Ock tributary swelled unexpectedly, and at St Helen’s Wharf, where the Ulyatts’ home lies in the shadow of the steeple of the town’s historic church, Mr Ulyatt said: “I’m very apprehensive.” He added:

His road is one of 90 streets in Abingdon that emergency services had expected to be flooded next. He spent the day barricading the garden steps. The local council has supplied three bags of limestone per door to each house, so Mr Ulyatt’s mission to find extra sandbags began before 8am with an emergency trip to B&Q, where the store had left customers to help themselves to a pile of sand, some bags and a shovel. The next stop was a local authority building where he encountered a scrum of local residents.

“There were only 50 bags and about 60 people, so it was a case of getting your hands on them and into the car as soon as possible. I have bagged up the airbrick hollows under the floor at both the back and the front of the house. We’re putting up defences and protecting the property as well as we can.

“It’s about protecting the things that you love, the photo albums, the books, the ornaments and pictures that are irreplaceable.”

And if all else fails, he added: “I’ve got the chest-waders in the garden shed.”

Next door, in the second half the conversion, aptly named Ducks Landing, James Openshaw, 68, and his partner Frances Scaddan, 63, were clearing out the rooms most at risk.

“This is our pride and joy,” said Mr Openshaw, entering the riverside conservatory where the waters flowed faster and faster beyond the books and framed photographs.

Ironically, these canal-boat enthusiasts have spent the past two months on the English waterways witnessing at first hand the damage caused around Leeds and Doncaster. But the flooding closer to home yesterday meant that the holiday was cut short and his narrow boat, the Umfazi, which is usually moored by the garden picnic table, had to be abandoned in nearby Banbury. “We decided to abandon ship,” Ms Scaddan said. They refused, however, to abandon home.

Voicing his concerns over looting, Mr Openshaw said: “We’re certainly not going to move out. Call it the bulldog spirit.”

His partner agreed. “You’ve lost control then,” she said.

And so coffee-table books were stacked above cabinets and cushions crowded the tops of wardrobes. Rugs were rolled up upon the tabletops, the television waited to be disconnected. “If they are not protected at that height we are all in trouble,” she added. “By then we will have to get our swimming costumes on.”

She has only recently retired after 14 years at Thames Water. The last time the floods damaged the property, according to documents, was in 1894.

“I’m hoping we will get away with it, but lots of other people haven’t, so why should we? It’s the surge I’m worried about, because when that comes up we could be in a spot of bother. It will come down in a wave, which means you have a lot more water coming in.”

Flooding forecasts

River Thames

Abingdon River levels were expected to peak at 11pm last night

Oxford Peak is expected this morning

Wallingford Peak at 3.15pm today

Pangbourne, Purley and Mapledurham Will start flooding today with peak expected at midnight tomorrow

Reading and Caversham: Risk of flooding from mid-afternoon today. Peak in early hours tomorrow

Henley, Wargrave and Shiplake Flooding started yesterday, peaking on Thursday afternoon

Cookham, Marlow, Datchet, Wraysbury, Staines, Laleham and Shepperton Flood peak forecast later this week

No flooding is expected below Shepperton

River Severn

Gloucester Peaks today at 11am

In the danger zone

Oxford Shops sold out of wellington boots and waterproofs. Dean Silence, from the Go Outdoors store, said: “In your average weekend in July we might sell the odd pair of wellies to a festival-goer, but certainly nothing like this”

Tewkesbury The 12th-century Abbey was flooded for the first time in memory. Drinkers at the nearby Bell pub helped to place sandbags. Canon Paul Williams said: “I am told that in 1760 the vicar had to row down the aisle to perform his service”

Upton upon Severn The Blues Festival was not a total washout despite most of the musicians being unable to reach the town. Those who did hosted an impromptu street party

Stafford A motorist was arrested for allegedly ignoring the closure of a flooded road. The 49-year-old driver was charged with failing to stop and resisting arrest. A police spokeswoman said: “Drivers must stick to the rules”

Hereford Archaeologists were inspecting the 4,000-year-old Rotherwas Ribbon for damage. Campaigners have said that the monument was left uncovered over the weekend and has “probably been damaged”

England Emergency calls to the AA were 67 per cent higher than usual in the flood region over the weekend. Mechanics were sent to 3,700 stuck motorists

West Mercia Increasing numbers of drivers were returning to trapped cars to find that they had been flooded and looted, police said. “The longer they are left unattended, often in remote locations, the more likely they are to be targeted,” a spokesman said

    ‘We have to protect the things we love. We’re staying put’, Ts, 24.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2127626.ece

A catastrophe

with mankind's footprints

stamped on it

July 24, 2007
From The Times
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Global warming is generating heavier rainfall over Britain of the sort that has triggered this week’s floods, scientists have confirmed for the first time.

While it has long been suspected that climate change is contributing to increased precipitation over midlatitude countries such as Britain, research has now conclusively linked greenhouse gases to heavier downpours.

The findings, from an international team including several British scientists, do not prove that this week’s flooding is the direct result of global warming: it is linked to weather patterns that have been known before.

It is consistent, however, with a much broader trend towards more rainfall, on which researchers have now found an unambiguously human fingerprint.

“The paper is saying there is a significant human influence on global rainfall patterns and this includes an increase of precipitation north of 50 degrees northern latitude, an area that includes the UK,” said Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the University of Reading who took part in the study.

In the study, which is to be published in the journal Nature, the scientists compared recorded changes in rain and snowfall over land with changes that are predicted by climate models that account for global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

The actual pattern of changes, with increased precipitation in latitudes north of 50 degrees, corresponds remarkably closely with the patterns that emerged from 14 different models. This suggests strongly that human-induced climate change has been responsible.

For the European region that includes Britain, the research team estimates that human activity has accounted for about two thirds of the observed trend. Other natural factors, such as volcanic activity, have also had an influence, but this is much smaller than that from people.

Dr Stott said that the study did not examine seasonal trends, but that other predictions suggest Britain will in general suffer wetter winters and drier summers, rather than multiple repeats of this year’s summer downpours, though significant uncertainties remain.

It is currently impossible to say whether the current bad weather is a result of global warming, and more research is needed into the origins of such extreme events.

“We looked at annual rainfall trends rather than any particular season,” Dr Stott said. “In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.”



— There is no easy way to say this — summer is shaping up to be one of the most depressing in memory (Paul Simons writes). The weather forecast models for the next seven days look truly horrible, with more showers midweek and even more misery next weekend, with only brief respites. One ray of hope is a hint of some fine weather in early to mid-August, but even this may prove to be a false hope.

Britain is caught in something of a meteorological sandwich, stuck between high pressure systems to the north in Iceland and to the south in the Azores. Storm clouds are squeezing through a gap in between these two huge anticyclones, riding underneath the high altitude jet stream wind. The weather pattern is stuck in a rut and refuses to budge.

It is tempting to blame the appalling weather on climate change, which is believed to increase the chances of extreme rainfall events. But one wet summer on its own proves very little. In fact, the top ten wettest Julys all happened two or three centuries ago.

No, if there is a sign of climate change at work in all this misery it shows up in the truly remarkable temperatures this month. Despite all the rain, temperatures have averaged 15.5C (59.9F) for Central England up to July 22, only 0.5C below normal for the month. There is a good chance that without global warming we might be suffering an even worse summer.

    A catastrophe with mankind's footprints stamped on it, Ts, 24.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2127599.ece

A flying visit is as close

as Brown gets to misery

faced by thousands

July 24, 2007
From The Times
Steve Bird in Upton upon Severn

If homeowners in some of the worst-hit areas of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire had looked skywards at around breakfast time yesterday, they may have seen the helicopter containing the Prime Minister.

At 7.15am Gordon Brown took an airborne tour of the brown patchwork of towns and villages before visiting the police co-ordination centre. It was as close as he got to the misery faced by thousands of people after the swollen rivers Severn and Avon laid waste to much of the two counties.

In Upton upon Severn, the small Worcestershire town into which all four roads are cut off by fast-moving waters, residents felt that his trip was simply a public relations exercise.

Karl Hooton, 40, who helped in the rescues over the weekend, said: “He should have got out into the streets and visited the people who are suffering. He should have asked them what they wanted and needed. He can look down at the water from on high, but he doesn’t know how deep it is or how fast flowing it is. He can’t see what’s happening to people’s homes.”

Richard Myers, 51, a member of the Mercia Inshore Search and Rescue, said: “He really should have visited us. He could have landed here with ease. A helicopter landed at the school yesterday to deliver medical supplies.”

Rodney Miles, 56, added: “It would have been good of him to talk to those who have been involved in the rescue out in the water, or residents who have been affected.”

The Severn burst its banks at Upton on Friday night, devastating the town’s weekend blues festival. Many of the pubs, now under 6ft (1.8m) of water, had been refurbished for the event. Some of those who did turn up brought caravans which were then swept away.

Residents are angered that Environment Agency flood barriers, which were meant to arrive on Friday, got stuck on the M5. However, it is generally accepted that they probably could not have held back the rising waters.

Tim Brain, Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, said that he had taken the decision that Mr Brown should not visit Gloucester and the surrounding areas because routes from the police base were impassable. “I advised him,” he said. “The closest place he could visit was Gloucester city centre. It was my professional advice that we couldn’t have the Prime Minister stuck on a flooded road.”

Parmjit Dhanda, the Labour MP for Gloucester, believed that Mr Brown’s visit offered hope to those whose homes have been wrecked.

The Prime Minister said that a review of the flooding would focus on drainage and how the infrastructure could be protected against more rain. But the priority was to help the most vulnerable and worst affected. He said: “We have got to meet the longer-term challenges and we have set up a review into what’s happening both with climate change and the effect of that on the services and what is happening here.

“I want to give support and sympathy to all those who have suffered as a result of the floods, to all those who have been displaced, to those who have had operations cancelled in hospitals, to all those worried about what might happen in the future. I want to say that the emergency services are doing an absolutely wonderful job.”

Peter Bungard, chief executive of Gloucestershire County Council, will write to Mr Brown to ensure that the authority could keep up the rescue and clean-up efforts. “He’s a busy man,” he said. “I’m grateful that he fitted us in. He was in listening mode. He took notes and appeared to really want to know what was happening.”

Meanwhile, in the high street in Upton upon Severn a cheer went up when one lorry driver managed to drive through the floods to deliver milk and bread to the local shop.

Protecting your home

To find out if you ar at risk of flooding, call the Floodline on 0845 9881188 or visit www.environment-agency.gov.uk/ subjects/flood

If you are

— Put plugs in sinks and weigh down with something heavy

— Place a sandbag in toilet bowl and block washing machine drain

— Turn off gas, electricity and water supplies at the mains

— Disconnect cookers and washing machines from rigid pipes

— Smear silicone sealant around window and door frames. Then close and lock

— Cover doors, windows and airbricks with plywood or sandbags

— Move furniture and electrical items upstairs, or place on bricks

— Weigh down or tie immovable furniture to stop it floating

Afterwards

— Call insurance company helpline

— Keep a record of the flood damage with photos and videos

— Commission immediate emergency pumping/repair work

— Open doors and windows

— Get power supplies checked before turning them on

— Wash taps and run them for a few minutes before use

And in future

— Use waterproof sealant on exterior walls

— Use water-resistant paint for internal ground floor decoration

— Seal cracks in walls

— Paint skirting boards of both sides before fitting

— Tile and seal the ground floor properly

— Solid flooring is more resistent to flood damage than boards

— Choose rugs rather than fitted carpet on ground floor

— Buy airbricks with removable covers

— Install anti-backflow valves to drains and sewers

— Place boilers and hot water cylinders in loft or first floor

 

Source: Environment Agency

    A flying visit is as close as Brown gets to misery faced by thousands, Ts, 24.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2127595.ece

10,000 homes flooded,

50,000 without power

and 150,000 have no water

July 24, 2007
From The Times
Valerie Elliott and David Brown

Servicemen and firefighters were battling to protect the electricity supplies of half a million people last night as the highest flood waters in memory continued to rise.

The Government announced an independent inquiry as water levels in the Thames and the Severn exceeded those of the devastating floods of 1947 and were forecast to rise to 20ft (6m) higher than normal.

More than 10,000 families have been left homeless in the West Country and Thames Valley over the past four days and thousands of others have been told to leave their homes as a mass of water surges down river. Electricity supplies to 50,000 homes have been cut and 150,000 homes have been left without water.

The Times was told last night that the utility companies were warned by the Government seven years ago that they needed to make key facilities flood-proof to protect supplies. The Castlemeads power station near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, was shut down yesterday morning, however, leaving more than 50,000 homes without electricity. Supplies to a further 500,000 homes were under threat as a 250-strong force of military personnel and firefighters attempted to prevent rising waters overwhelming the Walham substation.

There was a glimmer of hope last night when the Environment Agency said that the Severn appeared to have peaked two inches below the level that would have overwhelmed the substation. An agency spokesman warned, however, that it was still a “dangerous situation”.

The level of the Thames in Oxford may not peak until early Wednesday. Eight severe flood warnings and 50 other flood warnings remained in place last night as further rain added to the misery. Emergency planning teams met in Cambridgeshire after a flood warning was placed on the Great Ouse and the police prepared for possible floods around St Neots.

Hundreds more troops have been put on standby to help the police and fire services to rescue trapped families and provide humanitarian aid to villages that have been cut off since Friday night. Defence sources said that regional commanders were working at police headquarters in the worst-affected areas and providing troops and equipment whenever requested.

More than 350,000 people in Gloucester were told that they would be left without water after a treatment plant was overwhelmed by the floods. The police were called to guard supplies of bottled water at supermarkets after fights between customers. Severn Trent Water said last night that the households could be without water for up to two weeks.

Elliott Morley, Floods Minister from 1997 until last year, told The Times that he had been assured by the utility industries that key sites would be flood-proofed. “I remember previous flooding incidents where substations were vulnerable and there were power cuts,” Mr Morley said. “We really must now ensure that key installations are flood-proof so we do not descend into chaos every time there is some flooding.”

The utility companies had also been asked by the former Department of Trade and Industry, now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulation, to review the robustness of their sites against a one-in-a-hundred risk of flooding.

Nick Goodall, chief executive of the Energy Networks Association, which represents the nine power companies and the National Grid, said: “The companies are working to identify areas prone to flooding. This work is feeding into the companies’ network replacement plans, but this work is only possible with planning consent and regulatory approval.”

Gordon Brown, who visited Gloucestershire briefly yesterday, said that planning had to presume more extreme weather conditions. He said that a review would have to consider the siting of infrastructure because of the impact on water and electricity supplies. The review of the emergency in the West Country and last month’s floods in Yorkshire would have to cover the location of big constructions, drainage and flood defences.

Mr Brown defended the response of the Government and authorities. He said that funds to tackle the problem had risen from £300 million to £600 million and now to £800 million.

Peter Ainsworth, the Tory environment spokesman, said: “These events are increasing in ferocity and our infrastructure has to catch up with it.”

10,000 homes flooded, 50,000 without power and 150,000 have no water, Ts, 24.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2127616.ece

Eyewitness > 22.07.07 > Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury Abbey stands amid the waters

which cut off roads after the Severn and Avon rivers flooded

Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

The Guardian        pp. 20-21        23.7.2007

5.15pm update

County by county:

the areas worst hit by flooding

Monday July 23, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Staff and agencies

The flooding crisis in western and central England continued to disrupt hundreds of thousands of people's lives today, with power cut to thousands of homes and damage to the supply of drinking water.

Two of the worst hit areas were Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, with the banks of the rivers Severn and Thames coming under considerable pressure as water rose to a "critical level", the Environment Agency said.

The agency had nine severe flood warnings in place across Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, and with waters in the rivers Severn and Thames not expected to peak until tomorrow the number of flood warnings may increase.

There were four severe flood warnings located along the river Severn in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Worcester.

There were two severe flood warnings along the river Thames from Eynsham to Sandford Lock, near Little Wittenham. A further severe warning has been placed on the river Ock from Charney Bassett to Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, and there was a severe warning on the river Great Ouse in Bedfordshire, from Turvey to Sharnbrook.

Oxfordshire

Twelve centimetres fell in the county on Friday - the largest daily rainfall since records began for the area in 1968 - and though a surge in the Thames expected last night did not transpire, the Environment Agency was still warning that the Thames would break its banks, possibly flooding Oxford's city centre tomorrow.

Oxfordshire council predicted flooding on 41 roads in particular, and water levels were expected to rise further in Oxford's Botley Road where houses were already flooded. Overnight rain also raised water levels on the river Ock, which has already burst its banks in Abingdon, and the river Evenlode at Witney, where many properties have been engulfed by the overflowing river Windrush.

A sports stadium on Oxford's outskirts was being used to shelter 50 elderly people. In the event of an evacuation from the city centre and Abingdon area, it could hold 1,500 people, officials said. The council said it was making available sandbags from police stations and schools.

Gloucestershire

The county that the prime minister, Gordon Brown, visited today has been the scene of wide-scale evacuation. The famous town of Tewkesbury has been turned into an island by flooding from the river Thames, which was rising by 1cm an hour and was expected to reach its highest level since 1947.

Despite the erection of flood barriers by emergency services last night, one electricity substation was submerged overnight, blacking out 48,000 homes. A steel barrier has been built around a second substation that supplies 500,000 people.

Water treatment units have been damaged, which Severn Trent Water said would leave 150,000 homes in the county without water. The firm said an estimated 350,000 people - the residents of Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury - would lose their water supply from this afternoon. The supply would be disrupted for 72 hours, the Press Association reported.

For larger-scale water needs, around 600 water bowsers have been drafted in with military help. Water from these new sources should be drunk with care; Gloucestershire's director of public health today warned of a small risk of infection from the floodwaters.

The county's routine hospital treatments have been cancelled, and all magistrate and court hearings have also been postponed. Though the flooding was already bad, the Environment Agency predicted it would not peak in the county until late on Wednesday.

Bedfordshire

The Environment Agency has issued severe flood warnings for villages along the Great Ouse in north Bedfordshire.

Many roads were under water and five bridges in the county have been shut, but there were signs that the floods would spread down the river during the course of today, reaching the city of Bedford this evening. Homes and businesses in Buckingham were flooded on Friday.

Berkshire

The Berkshire-based Atomic Weapons Establisment (AWE), responsible for the final assembly of nuclear warheads, was hit by flood damage. With several parts of the Burghfield site affected, including its sewage treatment works, AWE staff were instructed by the Environment Agency to monitor the floodwater for escaped radioactive materials. They must report all results to the agency.

Twenty miles away from Oxford, the villages of Purley and Pangbourne have been severely affected and the Environment Agency predicted that the nearby city of Reading would be flooded in the next 48 hours. Reading city council predicted waters would reach their high point at 2am tomorrow morning.

Herefordshire

Rivers have flooded in the area, with 100 roads blocked and the 80 inhabitants of Hampton Bishop evacuated after the overflowing of the river Lugg. County officials were hopeful the worst was over, with officials saying only a couple of properties in the north of the area were without power. It was still recommended that people boil water before drinking it.

Surrey

Sutton and East Surrey Water warned 80,000 households and businesses within its Sutton supply area to boil tap water before drinking it, after the firm discovered rain had leaked into a tank of water that went out to customers.

    County by county: the areas worst hit by flooding, G, 23.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2132954,00.html

4.45pm update

350,000 homes lose water supplies

as flood misery grows

· Households face two-week wait for tap water
· Thames and Severn rivers set to rise further
· Emergency services battle to protect power supplies


Monday July 23, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
James Sturcke, Matthew Weaver and agencies

Thousands of homes could be without tap water for up to two weeks, police said today, as the flooding in parts of Britain was described as the worst in modern history.

Gordon Brown accepted that more money needed to be spent on defence work. The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, announced a review headed by an "independent person" and said the "emergency was far from over".

The Environment Agency issued nine severe flood warnings and said the flooding would spread as runoff from Friday's torrential rainfall reached rivers in southern England.

Severe flooding has affected the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Burghfield in Berkshire, which is responsible for the final assembly of nuclear warheads. "Several parts of the site, including a number of buildings and the site's sewage treatment works, have been affected," the Environment Agency said in a statement.

"AWE staff have been sampling and analysing the floodwater from the site. They have confirmed that there has been no escape of radioactive materials from the site."

AWE is required to continue with extensive sampling and monitoring of the floodwaters, reporting all results to the agency.

David Griffiths, the team leader of the agency's nuclear regulation group, said flooding had affected the site for three days and he would be demanding that AWE reassesses its flood defences.

An AWE spokesman, Alan Price, confirmed there had been flooding at both the Burghfield and Aldermaston sites during heavy rainfall on Friday which affected "one or two" buildings. He refused to say which buildings were affected, and said there was no current flooding at either site.

The RAF said the flooding of the past few days had resulted in its largest ever peacetime operation.

Homes and businesses near the river Severn have been particularly affected, while the water level in the Thames was rising. Severn Trent Water confirmed that 350,000 homes would be cut off from mains supplies by the end of today.

Oxford and Reading were likely to be flooded in the next 48 hours, the Environment Agency said.

More than 48,000 homes in Gloucester were without electricity after waters entered the Castlemeads substation, which provides power to half the city. Another 70,000 houses were without tap water after the flooded Mythe treatment plant was shut down.

"The best-case scenario is that it will be seven days before Mythe is working, and it may be 14 days before it is fully operational," said Tim Brain, the Gloucestershire police chief constable, at a press conference.

He said emergency flood defences around Walham substation, which provides power for 500,000 people, were "holding for the time being".

"The situation is unprecedented. There are high levels of water and there is more to come. We have by no means passed the peak."

More than 250 bowser tanks were dispensing water to homes cut off from mains supplies in the Gloucester area. Local supermarkets were giving out 150,000 litres of bottled water.

Shona Arora, the director of Gloucestershire public health, said there was a small risk of infection from the floodwaters and advised parents to keep their children away. Water from bowsers should be boiled as a precaution, she said.

Environment Agency spokesman Anthony Perry said: "We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before. The benchmark was 1947 and this has already exceeded it."

Terry Standing, chief officer of Gloucestershire fire and rescue, said the situation across the county remained "critical".

"We have had about 2,500 calls during this crisis - to put that in context we normally have 8,000 a year," he said.

Hundreds of people, including many in care homes, have been airlifted to safety by the RAF. In Oxford, Kassam stadium, on the outskirts of the city, was being used as a temporary shelter for up to 1,500 people.

A council spokesman said: "We have currently got 50 elderly people here. We are waiting to see if there will be any further evacuations from Oxford, Abingdon and the south of the county. If there are, they will all come here."

Around 150 firefighters and servicemen from RAF Innsworth were trying to protect electricity substations north of Gloucester supplying power to 500,000 homes.

West Mercia police said people forced to abandon their cars in south Worcestershire faced having them broken into by opportunist thieves.

The government and emergency services have been criticised for their slow response. The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told GMTV today that the government had doubled investment for future flood defence over the last 10 years.

"We've seen unprecedented levels of rainfall and flooding that people haven't seen for 60 years," he said.

"The trouble is, when you get that amount of rain in that concentrated a time, even the best flood defences in the world are going to be overtopped, and that's what we've seen in many places."

    350,000 homes lose water supplies as flood misery grows, G, 23.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2132767,00.html

Two months of rain in just one day

· Met Office: deluge in south is worst in living memory
· Battered north braced for more as front advances

Saturday July 21, 2007
Guardian
Fred Attewill, Martin Wainwright and Riazat Butt


Some of the heaviest rainfall in living memory deluged southern Britain yesterday, inundating places with up to one sixth of their entire annual rainfall in less than 24 hours.

Downpours knocked out satellite communications, cut power, forced schools and homes to be evacuated, and badly disrupted roads and railways.

Emergency services were severely stretched, while one wedding party was last night preparing to bed down in a church after they were surrounded by rapidly rising floodwaters.

London saw its luck run out after having avoided the worst of the recent downpours, while north-east England, parts of which are still suffering from June's monsoon conditions, braced itself for more damage as the rain moved north.

The wettest part of the UK was Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, which received 121.2mm of rain from midnight Thursday until 5pm yesterday - three times its average rainfall for July and a sixth of what it would expect for the whole year.

Steve Randall, a forecaster for the Met Office, said: "I've never seen anything like it, and I've been in the Met Office for 34 years. It's an extraordinary amount, more like you would expect in a tropical rainforest."

At Barry in south Wales, residents were trapped in their homes as sewage poured into the street. Firefighters used a boat to rescue three people from knee-high water in one building; a man was briefly trapped in his car in a dip below a road bridge. In Sussex, flooding in the Haywards Heath area led to serious train delays, while in Worthing the hospital was flooded to a depth of 18 inches.

The Thames Valley was also hard hit, with Reading and Maidenhead town centres flooded; there were long delays on the M4 after a landslip caused by heavy rain left just one lane open on the eastbound carriageway.

Parts of south-west London saw floods two-feet-deep, and the Underground was badly disrupted.

At Heathrow, 141 flights were cancelled as air traffic controllers grounded aircraft in the worst of the downpours.

A severe weather warning will remain in force today for north Wales and the west Midlands, but the rain is expected to ease off overnight. Summer has no plans to return, however. Sunday is forecast to be showery and dull in most areas, and heavy rain may return to the south on Monday.

The only bright spot was that the worst of the rain kept away from the battered north, where a huge recovery operation is installing thousands of temporary homes for people whose houses have already been wrecked. Only a short-lived outrider of today's storms reached the devastated areas of Yorkshire and Humberside, penetrating as far as Richmond, North Yorkshire, where the sudden volume of water burst the banks of Skeeby beck, flooding homes in six villages.

In Cheltenham, one couple's plans for the perfect wedding went down the drain as they and 100 guests were marooned in their church by floodwaters 5ft deep.

As Sarah Parfitt, 34, married Andy Holtom, 31, at Holy Trinity, torrential rain caused a stream next to the church to swell and burst its banks, sending filthy brown water churning towards the church building. They were confronted by floodwater on stepping out for photographs, and, after calling the fire service, were told to stay put. The new Mrs Holtom said: "When I imagined my wedding day as a little girl, I always thought it would be sunny and totally perfect - I had no idea it would end up like this."

    Two months of rain in just one day, G, 21.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2131580,00.html

4.15pm update

Rain, rain and yet more rain hits UK

Friday July 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Martin Wainwright and Mark Oliver

More heavy rain swept across Britain from the Atlantic today, triggering flash floods to add to more than £1.5bn worth of damage caused by storms in the past three weeks.

A blanket severe weather warning was issued by the Meteorological Office for the whole of Wales, the Midlands and East Anglia and everywhere in southern England except Cornwall.

Forecasters said the downpours could dump up to 10cm (4in) of rain in less than 24 hours in some areas, with central and southern England and Wales the worst affected.

Five people trapped on the first floor of a building in Barry, south Wales, were rescued by firefighters amid a busy day for the emergency services.

Brief heavy showers passed in successive belts as council flood controls and insurance call centres doubled staff for the weekend.

Berkshire was among the worst hit areas. In Hampshire, where scores of roads were closed, the Fire and Rescue Service said it had received more than 200 calls.

There were appeals for the public not to call emergency numbers unless life was in danger or there was a risk of serious damage to property.

Electrical cables were brought down in Basingstoke and a BMW car left stranded in 60cm (2ft) of floodwater that hit large parts of the town.

The only piece of good news was that the worst of the rain kept away from the battered north, where a huge recovery operation is installing thousands of temporary homes for people whose houses have been wrecked.

More than 1,000 caravans have been installed in Hull and a complete new caravan park is being built at Toll Bar, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, where 80% of properties were badly damaged in June.

Plans to use a cruise ship as a floating shelter have been drawn up in Hull, in case evacuees currently staying with friends and family need a home later in the year. Many damaged houses will take eight months to dry out and redecorate.

Only a short-lived outrider of today's storms reached the devastated area, penetrating as far as Richmond in North Yorkshire, where the sudden volume of water burst the banks of Skeeby beck, flooding homes in six villages.

Phil Rothwell, head of flood risk policy at the Environment Agency, said: "Everyone should stay fully aware of the weather situation over the weekend. Where there is the danger of rivers rising people should check for flood warnings in their area."

The Highways Agency warned drivers to use headlights and double the distance between cars because of the level of rain and spray.

Severe weather warnings will remain in force tomorrow for north Wales and the West Midlands. Sunday is forecast to be showery and dull in most areas, and heavy rain may return to the south on Monday.

The Conservative leader, David Cameron, was visiting Lincoln this afternoon to meet victims and rescue workers, including salvage teams who were shifting mounds of ruined furniture and belongings to landfill sites.

In one of the worst-hit areas, Doncaster, a couple said their flooded home in Adwick le Street had been burgled twice since waist-high water filled it a fortnight ago.

Simon Young, 35, the director of a multimedia firm, said he and his wife, Cheryl, 28, had nothing left. "They've taken the kiddies' money box, Cheryl's grandmother's jewellery, the newborn's clothes, even nappies. I think we need to put a sign up outside - 'burgled twice, please don't bother'."

Rail travel has also been disrupted throughout Wales, south-west England and southern England, and some firms have been forced to provide bus replacement services.

The Virgin Cross Country service had to suspend its services between Birmingham New Street and Gloucester because of the flooding. Other train firms affected were Arriva Trains Wales, Chiltern Railways, First Capital Connect, First Great Western, South West Trains, Southeastern and Southern.

Parts of the London underground system have been also been affected and at one stage 15 stations were closed. Transport for London's website was updating details of which services were disrupted.

Police in London warned motorists to avoid the Wandsworth area, especially where there are roads that pass under bridges.

    Rain, rain and yet more rain hits UK, G, 20.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2131208,00.html

Reports of the death of summer

are greatly exaggerated,

say forecasters

After the wettest June on record,
better weather is promised - but not just yet

Saturday July 7, 2007
Guardian
Alok Jha, science correspondent

On Tuesday hailstones the size of 20p pieces smacked into the streets of south London; later in the week, officials at Wimbledon considered extending play into a third week because of the miserable weather; meanwhile, much of northern England is recovering from a deadly spate of heavy flooding.

The apocalyptic June weather has even led some people, notably former weather presenter John Kettley, to suggest that the British summer was over in April.

The Met Office confirmed this week that it has been the wettest June since records began in 1914. But reports of the death of summer have been greatly exaggerated: despite inherent uncertainties in making long-term weather forecasts, the Met Office says that Britain will enjoy a relatively warm, dry summer in the coming months, although more unsettled weather lies ahead for the next few weeks.

"The heavy rainfall we have seen through June has been due to the jet stream across the Atlantic - a ribbon of strong winds in the upper part of the atmosphere - being much further south than it would normally be," said Dave Britton of the Met Office. "This jet stream steers weather systems across the Atlantic. As it is further south these are being pushed across the UK rather than steered further north between the UK and Iceland." Britain's rainfall average last month was 134.5mm (5.3in), beating the previous high in 1980 of 121.2mm (4.8in).

The country's changeable weather is a result of its location - with the Atlantic on one side and a large continent on the other, subtle changes in the wind direction can bring marked changes in the weather, making predictions difficult. According to the Met Office, the "UK also lies near the 'battleground' of warm air from the tropics and cold air from the poles, which spawns the vigorous depressions and quiet anti-cyclones that also bring marked changes in weather."

Weather forecasting begins with a detailed measure of the current state of the atmosphere. Scores of instruments on weather balloons, satellites and ground observatories around the country make continuous measurements of sunshine, air pressure, wind direction and temperature. The numbers are then fed into a mathematical model running on a supercomputer that is roughly equivalent in power to 8,000 desktop PCs.

"They do lots and lots of simulations with slightly different initial conditions just to see the range of possible outcomes, called an ensemble," said Ralf Toumi, an atmospheric scientist at Imperial College London. "From the ensemble they deduce the most likely outcome."

It is not an exact science because weather systems are governed by chaos theory, which says that small changes can lead to highly unpredictable disruptions later down the line.

The Met Office carries out forecasts for the next five days, which are available to the public. The European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts, a collection of all the meteorological centres across Europe, also carries out medium-range forecasts for five to 10 days. "The errors grow exponentially - you will not find credible forecasts even for the large scale that go past 10 days," said Dr Toumi.

The Met Office also advises on likely trends up to 15 days ahead and provides an outlook for the month ahead. "We have recently begun producing seasonal forecasts. Like the monthly forecasts these do not say whether a specific day will be good or bad, wet or dry, but give an idea how the season may be in terms of temperature and rainfall against long-term averages," said Mr Britton. In the past decade computers have become more powerful. The Met Office says its forecasts for the day ahead are correct six times out of seven, and its three-day forecasts are as accurate as one-day forecasts were 20 years ago.

As for reports of the demise of summer, Mr Britton urges some optimism. "I wouldn't write the summer off yet -there's a reasonable chance of seeing some spells of good weather into the summer. We've got two months to go yet."

What's in store

The Met Office produced its summer forecast in April, updating it with new information every month since. "The latest updates suggest temperatures will still be above the 1971-2000 average, which fits with what happened in June, which was 1.5C above average," said Dave Britton of the Met Office. The south will see rainfall around average and the north will get rainfall at average or just above average levels. In the shorter term, expect things to remain unsettled. "As far as we can see, in the next 15 days, there's nothing to suggest that anything's going to settle down," said Mr Britton.

    Reports of the death of summer are greatly exaggerated, say forecasters, G, 7.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2120903,00.html

Floods caused 50%

more damage than estimated

· Prime minister to visit affected areas today
· Promises 'comprehensive' recovery programme

Saturday July 7, 2007
Guardian
Steven Morris and Will Woodward

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, will visit areas devastated by the flooding today as insurers said the crisis would cost them £1.5bn and civic leaders warned that some people may not be able to move back into their homes until 2009.

Mr Brown promised a "comprehensive" programme not just to help the hundreds of people who are still unable to return to their homes but to help communities recover.

The prime minister's spokesman denied the government had been slow to react. "The prime minister spoke directly to the local authority leaders involved some days ago. We've been looking at financial assistance and what we can do to follow on from that in the last week or so."

The scale of the challenges faced was only becoming clear yesterday. The Association of British Insurers said the floods would cost the industry an estimated £1.5bn - 50% more than it originally thought. It said insurers were dealing with claims from around 27,500 homes with an average value of £30,000 and from 7,000 businesses averaging £100,000.

The mayor of Doncaster, Martin Winter, said 3,000 people were evacuated from their homes during the flooding and about 700 were still unable to return. "It may be six to 18 months for some people before we can actually get them back in their homes, if at all," he said. "We've got to do a full condition assessment to look at whether some of these houses are safe to get people back into.

"We need to look at whether or not, in terms of long-term risk assessment, in some of these areas we do rebuild them or whether we rebuild on higher ground.

"It has been the biggest evacuation since the war, the biggest national disaster that Doncaster has dealt with in the last 60 years."

Mr Winter said a large number of people were without insurance but he said some householders had told him they were not granted insurance because they were living on a flood plain.

In Hull civic leaders, who this week said theirs was a "forgotten city", said they were facing a bill that could top £200m. Around 17,000 properties in Hull have been affected by the floods and 10,500 homes evacuated.

Speaking in Hull, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said a "swift" response from the government was vital, emphasising that many of the victims were "really vulnerable people".

"The council and all the agencies have done a wonderful job in coordinating the immediate relief but what needs to happen now is to make sure that those who lost their homes can be sorted out pretty quickly," he said. "So I'm hoping that the insurance companies will do it quickly, I'm hoping the mortgage companies, where people have got to re-mortgage their houses, will be more gracious, and I'm hoping that the central government will match up to what the council is trying to do. The response should be quick, fast and swift."

Mr Brown's spokesman said the government was looking at how it could provide additional assistance through the Bellwin scheme, under which local authorities are given funds to help clear up after disasters. This money could be used for setting up temporary offices, hiring additional vehicles, initial highway repairs, clearing the drainage systems, the provision of emergency food aid and so on.

The spokesman said the government was also considering further help for individuals most at risk, through crisis loans, community grants and local authority support.

Ministers were also in discussion with the insurance industry to ensure claims from people affected by the flooding were dealt with as quickly as possible.

In the longer term the government was also looking at how to strengthen the country's flood defences.

Speaking on BBC1's Breakfast programme, Mr Brown said: "There will be a comprehensive programme to deal with not just the immediate problem where people are homeless, where people are in centres, where people have been displaced, but also to deal with the recovery programmes."

Hundreds of mourners gathered yesterday to pay their last respects to 14-year-old Ryan Parry, who was swept away to his death in Sheffield.

His form tutor, Hossein Yazdi, said: "To me my students are like young plants, growing stronger every day, and Ryan has been cut down long before his prime."

Floods caused 50% more damage than estimated, G, 7.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2120862,00.html