Keep dry and carry on, Britain
Britain is this weekend in the middle of its worst flooding in almost 70 years. John Hartevelt reports from soggy London.
AFLYER IN the mailbox of Spelthorne borough residents on Thursday said it would be this wet for another two weeks. By Sunday, residents were told the Thames would be up by another 10 centimetres.
‘‘This means that severe flooding is likely to continue and you need to take action now.’’
The Spelthorne Borough Council, which delivered the yellow notices, covers a small area in the north of Surrey. It’s about 45 minutes drive west of central London, just past Heathrow Airport. Residents of the area’s main towns, Staines and Egham, are dotted along the River Thames and in between a whole series of reservoirs. Over the past week, the area has been overwhelmed by the worst flooding since 1947. Most have lost power, many have been helped to safety by fire crews and others have seen their homes submerged. Nerves have frayed. A video posted to Facebook on Thursday showed the head of the Spelthorne Borough Council, Robert Watts, responding to questions from a flood-hit resident by saying: ‘‘If people want to live by the river, that’s up to them’’. Watts subsequently explained to local media the man questioning him had been ‘‘aggressive’’ and he was just trying to ‘‘say something to get him off my case’’.
Politicians at all levels have copped an earful throughout the flooding crisis that has gradually spread across Britain’s South this month. Most, however, agree that the country is simply suffering another of nature’s nasty turns. The UK Met Office says the country is enduring rainfall unlike anything in more than 200 years. Since the beginning of December, 5800 homes and businesses have flooded. Nearly three-quarters of the fire services across England and Wales have been called in to fight flooding in Somerset, Thames Valley and Cornwall. About 2000 soldiers are trying to weather the storms and, Major General Patrick Sanders said another 3000 are on stand-by. Sanders told the Daily Telegraph the country was grappling with ‘‘an unparalleled natural crisis’’ and that parts of the country resembled ‘‘a battlefield’’ against rising flood waters.
January rainfall in the UK was 183.8 millimetres – 151 per cent of the average for the month. In England, 158.2mm fell – 191 per cent of the average. That followed the fifth-wettest December in 100 years. This month looks likely to break records too. This weekend alone, forecasters have predicted a further 100mm of rain on high ground in the South West. By comparison with New Zealand, in its wettest month, July, Wellington averages about 137mm of rain, Auckland 145mm and Christchurch 68.4mm.
The rain has come steadily, rather than in one or two great downpours. Roger Brugge, a meteorologist from the University of Reading, told the BBC that in his area, there has been 5mm or more of rainfall for 24 days in the past two months.
‘‘There would normally only be two or three such days in a month.’’
It’s been ‘‘the steady drip drip’’ that has caused the damage, Brugge says.
In London, the wet has been practically inescapable for some weeks now. Even when there is a break in the weather and it’s possible to venture out for any period, great pools of rainwater quickly loom up and soak your feet. Umbrellas are everywhere but of marginal use because the rain usually comes with wind strong enough to turn them inside out. Things got particularly grim last week when the constant rain and gusty, cold winds combined with a two-day strike on the underground trains. It was commuter misery for millions of sodden Londoners.
And in England, things are getting really serious when football is affected. Everything from the pub leagues to the Premiere League has suffered. Seemingly endless rain since December has prevented some teams in Bracknell’s Sunday league from playing a single game this season. All 16 of Bracknell Town Council’s pitches, in rain-soaked Berkshire, have been too unsafe to play on for months. Allan Moffat, the town council’s recreational facilities manager, told local media: ‘‘It’s atrocious really.’’ At the other end of footballing spectrum, a topflight match between Everton and Crystal Palace at Goodison Park in Liverpool was postponed on Wednesday after damage to nearby buildings, caused by strong winds, made the ground unsafe.
As ever, in the greatest trials, stories of courage have emerged. Tucked beneath the bold headlines about politicians scrapping over the floods, each of Britain’s major newspapers has carried stories of fortitude and simple decency. The Guardian has given a lot of attention to the money central government is making available for relief work, but it also carried the story of Jack Stevenson, a 69-yearold former Concorde cabin manager who has become a local hero in the Berkshire village of Sunnymeads. Since his own uninsured home went under water last week, Stevenson has reportedly done everything from lifting a 93-year-old woman from her home to fetching a much-wanted pack of beer for a stranded resident.
‘‘In the quiet moments I want to cry and it is quite depressing, but somehow, even though I’m not a teenager, I dig deep and there’s another gear,’’ Stevenson said.
The Guardian also spoke to Steve Wilton, whose family moved in to their dream home – a farmhouse dating to 1830 – just before Christmas.
‘‘I was going to take my time doing it up, enjoy it. This was going to be it – when I leave here, I thought, it’ll be in a box,’’ Wilton, 56, told the paper.
Before they bought the place, Wilton said they were told the farm had never been flooded in its 150-plus year history. Waist-high waders are now needed to walk through the kitchen.
Wilton described the helplessness of watching the water rise towards his home.
‘‘We sandbagged the doors but it came through the floor. And through the walls. There’s no way you can stop it. We did all we could, honestly. There was nothing more we could do. We worked ourselves in to the ground.’’
The cost to families, businesses and the country as a whole is already reckoned by one economist to be in excess of £1 billion (NZ$2b). In trying to get a grip on the crisis, Prime Minister David Cameron – at his first press conference in many months – said money was no object and that his government would stump up whatever was required to put things right. His promise quickly turned into a problem – where exactly would this money come from? Was it a blank cheque? Not exactly. It was more of a rhetorical flourish, designed to shore up confidence in his government’s resolve in a crisis. His friend and fellow prime minister John Key has faced similar tests – drought, earthquakes, a mining disaster. But the brutal bear pit of British politics finds flaws and fissures more quickly than is the case in New Zealand. Although Cameron has tried, neither he nor any other politician has inspired great confidence among Britons in the middle of the floods. In fact, quite a few have suffered a fate similar to Robert Watts of the Spelthorne Borough Council and been attacked for showing an interest. Even rescue workers who arrived to help in Wraysbury, Berkshire, on Monday had to be pulled out on the advice of police after they were subject to abuse from locals angry that help had taken so long to arrive.
And when the politicians have not been attacked by angry locals, they have been raging at one another. Labour leader Ed Miliband was asked repeatedly by local Conservative MP Alok Sharma ‘‘Why are you actually here?’’ when he travelled to survey the flooding in Berkshire this week. The Environment Agency, too, has been at the end of much fingerpointing for what it has or has not contributed in managing the damage. Climate change has been mentioned, without prompting much debate – only a few doubt that it has played a part in the floods. Perhaps the most controversy it stoked was when the Green Party (which in the UK has nothing like the status it enjoys in New Zealand) suggested that, as part of a 10-point plan, any climate change sceptics in senior government roles should be sacked.
For the most part, Britons seem to be sticking to their own favourite stereotype of themselves: stiff-upper lip and just get on with it. It will rain a lot, stuff will get wet and politicians will stand in front of puddles, posing for the cameras. Russell Brand, the comedian and quasi-intellectual, captured the mood in a short video message to flood victims. ‘‘Hello,’’ he beamed.
‘‘Sorry about your floods and sorry about the politicians coming to your towns in posh wellies pretending to care about you. Good luck!’’