Britain's Katrina

As large tracts of southern England spend another submerged day, it is becoming clearer how ramshackle the response has been. The success of meeting the demands of the situation were down, more to luck and the dedication and skill of many in the emergency services, than design.

A report in 2004 made clear that the diversity of responsibility in the face of a natural disaster leads to confusion, delay and potential loss of life. It recommended that the Environment Agency would, in situations such as we are seeing today, take overall responsibility for co-ordination and decision-making.

In 2005, the Government agreed to this and said it would be in place by summer of 2006. We are still waiting.

Now I don’t believe that this is due to lack of Government concern or care, it was just that it was not a priority, and with a hot summer in 2006, followed by cabinet in-fighting, the risk of flooding receded. But this year, the flooding has been the worst since 1947, and the problems have been made worse by the way development and growth has been managed - Green Belt development and house building on ‘desirable’ green field sites, mean there is less land for the water to soak into.

Gordon Brown has already announced the intention to build 240,000 homes over the next 10 years or so – many of those have been earmarked to flood plains which, from where I sit, doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Clearly we need houses, but much more thought is required at the planning stage into foreseeable environmental problems, as well as social issues, and their solutions. Clearly, not everything can be planned for, but much can, it just requires will.

And Then The Waters Came!

Large areas of Southern and Eastern England are under water after some of the heaviest rainfall to hit the UK in half a century. Last Thursday saw an unprecedented "one month's" rain in less than 3 hours, and it has continued to rain since then. Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire is the meeting point of the River Avon and Severn, and as a result of both rivers bursting their banks, the town is now, effectively, an island.

Unfortunately, although the rain has eased off, both those rivers are fed from Wales, and so there is likely to be a flood surge over the next few days. Emergency services are in full flow, but there are real problems now emerging. The most ironic is a scarcity of drinking water! Large tankers are being brought in to help with the supply, and food is being brought in. The government has agreed to offset 100%, local authority clean-up costs in all emergency areas, which should mean a quicker and more efficient response to need - lets just hope that the insurance companies (which make big fat profits each year) are just as quick.

However, the problems that remain are practical and unsettling for those involved, and will be with them for many months to come. Saturated homes which will take months to dry out; lost crops in the farms, businesses not able to do business and just the general mess and muck something like this brings.

Finally, I hope this will bring about a re-think on planning for weather driven disasters. Building on flood-plains needs to be assessed. Flood-plains existed to allow rivers to burst their banks and let the surrounding ground to soak up the over-flow. Better flood defenses, with more thought going into how water can be channelled away from population centres. Clearly, I'm no expert on these things, but we can't keep allowing our country to drown each time El Nino decides to burp!