WINTER BLAST
Demands for action days ahead of fourth storm
Snow-topped Pen-y-ghent looms large for a walker in the Yorkshire Dales as a cold snap hits Yorkshire. The cold weather is expected to last for a few more days, according to forecasters. There may be gusty winds and sleet showers in the county today.
BUSINESSES CLEARING up after the second bout of serious flooding in four years have joined MPs in calling for more help for inundated areas, days ahead of the fourth named storm of winter.
Hundreds of householders and small business owners across Yorkshire were gutting their properties after water more than 4ft deep in places surged through towns and villages on Sunday.
The clean-up operation was continuing in the worst-hit areas of the Calder Valley in freezing conditions as a dog walker died after he was hit by a falling tree branch in Liverpool.
And the Met Office said another named weather system – Storm Dennis – is set to bring more very wet and windy weather at the weekend.
Advance weather warnings for rain on Saturday – which include a swathe of West and North Yorkshire – are warning of a “small chance” of homes and businesses flooding.
Anger in drenched villages like Mytholmroyd, near Halifax where floodwater is thought to have poured through gaps in unfinished £30m defences, mounted as MPs and council leaders demanded reassurances
that the same fate would not reoccur. Bradford Council Leader Coun Susan Hinchcliffe called on the Government to provide support for people whose homes and businesses had been flooded by Storm Ciara.
She said: “We are in the grip of a global climate emergency and, as a nation, it is time we stopped treating weather events like this as exceptional.”
Coun Hinchcliffe said
there were still too many people who could not get flood insurance, were not eligible for the Flood Re scheme, a joint initiative between the Government and insurers, or lived in areas that had not been flooded before.
She said a Flood Resilience Grant scheme needed to be set up “at a pace”, adding: “Home owners and businesses are having to deal with costs now and
need help.” Meanwhile York MP Rachael Maskell wrote to Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers to press her over the length
of time it is taking to complete new defences, four years after the Boxing Day floods.
Although work has begun on the Environment Agency’s flood barrier programme in the centre of York, she said there were still unprotected properties, including in Clementhorpe where a new barrier is still to be installed.
Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves also urged the Government to
“stop gambling with people’s livelihoods and safety” and pay the £23m shortfall for critical flood defence work in the city. She said the city had a close escape from Storm Ciara.
Meanwhile, four tourists – three in trainers – rescued from near the summit of Britain’s highest peak are lucky to be alive, rescuers said. The four were found in a blizzard on Ben Nevis.
It is time we stopped treating weather events like this as exceptional. Bradford Council Leader Coun Susan Hinchcliffe.
From: Paul Muller, Woodthorpe Gardens, Sandal, Wakefield.
IT is impossible to arrest the flow of water downhill and every cubic metre of water is equivalent to a cubic metre of concrete, so its flow is difficult to impede. The only solution is to dredge the rivers downstream, thus removing any obstruction to the flow of flood water. This will stop the repeated flooding around the Calder and the Don.
From: Jaap Posthuma de Boer, Shrewsbury.
IF North Yorkshire had been in Holland it would flood once and then never again.