Floods ‘to be more frequent’
DISASTROUS weather events like “Thunder Thursday” are likely to become more frequent on Tyneside, a floods expert has warned.
Today marks 10 years since the astonishing deluge, also known as the Great Tyneside Storm, hit.
A month’s worth of rain fell in just two hours on June 28, 2012 – causing chaos across the region as water flooded into homes and swamped streets, thousands were left without power, and commuters were trapped as transport systems came to a standstill.
In Newcastle alone, a staggering £70m worth of damage was done by the colossal downpour.
Darren Varley, Newcastle City Council’s principal engineer in flood management, says the phenomenon was the first of its kind on Tyneside for around a century and “focused everyone’s minds” – and warned that climate change means that repeat occurrences will become more regular.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “I remember standing in the civic centre watching this huge storm rolling in towards us. My wife phoned me and she was going to pick the kids up in Jesmond and I just told her to get home as fast as she could, but the kids were crying and screaming all the way home. It was awful.”
Mr Varley added: “We are expecting these events to be more frequent, but we have not had anything comparable since 2012. We had flooding in 2016 and a spread of smaller events around the city, but nothing on that scale. But the
climate change predictions say the chances of this happening more in the future are becoming more likely.
“The worst we have had was probably shortly after Thunder Thursday, in September 2012, that was quite widespread around the city but there is still nothing that stands in comparison.”
After the flooding, a major review was held into Newcastle’s preparedness for emergencies and engineers came up with a set of priority areas where flood defence measures needed to be installed to prevent more devastation to homes, schools, and businesses.
Some of those have been completed in areas including around Benfield School in Walkergate, Brandling Park, and the King George V playing fields in Fenham.
More than 20 more alleviation schemes costing almost £40m
combined are planned by 2030 – including in St James’ Boulevard in the city centre, the Town Moor, and various streets in Walker.
There are also major, long-term plans in the works for a new
Quayside flood barrier to protect some of Newcastle and Gateshead’s most prized assets from the potentially disastrous knock-on effects of rising sea levels.
Mr Varley said: “Clearly a permanent solution is going to attract an enormous amount of interest. There are plans from NE1 for the future of the Quayside and we need to integrate whatever proposals come forward for a permanent flood barrier with the wider plans for the Quayside. Things like transport, tourism, heritage are all involved in the decision. But the thing that works in our favour is that the value of the asset being protected is huge.”