Britain steps up response to flooding
After weeks of heavy rain, and with more on the way, engineers are sent to Somerset.
LONDON — Amid rising anger from residents and forecasts of more rain, the British government sent military officials to southwestern England on Thursday to help deal with floodwater that has turned whole villages into islands and drowned parts of the nation’s storybook country- side.
Some communities in the county of Somerset have been cut off for weeks by the flooding, the result of storms that have lashed Britain almost nonstop since Christmas. The freak weather is linked to the harsh snowstorms in the United States, where cold fronts have collided with warm fronts in the South and strengthened the jet stream across the Atlantic, stirring a caldron of precipitation.
Parts of southern England have suffered their wettest January since recordkeeping began a century ago. More storms are pre- dicted for this weekend and into early February, and flood warnings have been issued for more than two dozen areas.
Up to 45 square miles of the Somerset Levels, a f lat expanse near the city of Bristol, lie swamped beneath a plain of muddy brown water. British media have broadcast aerial video of car roofs and hedges barely visible above the water’s surface.
The government on Thursday dispatched military engineers to Somerset to see how the army might help alleviate the misery of villages such as Muchelney, which has been submerged for a month. Residents heckled Environment Secretary Owen Paterson during his visit a few days ago, asking why so little had been done.
Many link the lack of action to the fact that Somerset, with a population of about 550,000, lies more than 100 miles west of London, making the floods a distant problem to lawmakers going about their daily business in the capital.
They also say the government has dragged its feet on their request for local waterways to be cleared of the silt that has built up over years. Such a project would cost about $6.6 million.
“We’re quite a long way from London. We’re a little bit rural out here,” David Hall, the deputy leader of the Somerset County Council, said in a telephone interview. “We now have a firm commitment from the government to solve the big issue once this particular situation is resolved: to get the rivers dredged. That’s what we’ve been pressing for so long.”
Paterson has also suggested that the army could send in amphibious vehicles to assist residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods.