Shortly before 6am last Monday forecasters at the Met Office’s Exeter
headquarters e-mailed the Environment Agency with the first warning that “a
serious weather event” was likely to hit England on Friday.
With weeks of rain across the country leaving ground sodden and rivers at
unseasonably high levels, whichever area bore the brunt of the storm brewing
over the Atlantic was likely to face the most severe flooding.
By Wednesday morning the forecasters had narrowed down the expected location
to the M4/M5 corridor in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
This morning thousands of families will still be cleaning up after the most
devastating floods to hit the area for 60 years.
Meanwhile, millions of others are braced for the surge of water making its way
downstream along the rivers Thames and Severn today.
Yesterday evening hundreds of people gathered at Gloucester Docks to watch
helplessly as the dark brown swollen river rose at 1cm per hour closer to
the top of its banks.
Earlier in the morning they had read Sunday newspaper reports of the
destruction at towns and villages farther up the rivers Thames, Severn and
Avon and their tributaries.
The River Leam had burst its banks in Leamington, much of Stratford-upon-Avon
town centre was under water, hundreds of people in Birmingham had to flee
their homes after two rivers burst their banks and 200 were rescued in Aston
when the River Tame overflowed.
Within hours the water had risen to more than six feet above the river banks,
leaving first-floor rooms and roofs as the only refuge. The RAF had begun
its biggest peacetime rescue operations while RNLI lifeboats were also
brought in to help to save hundreds of people trapped in their homes.
Rescue helicopters passed over tens of thousands of acres of flooded farm-land
looking for isolated buildings where people had become trapped after the
rivers burst. Kristine Long, from Welford-on-Avon, said: “We’ve had people
airlifted by the RAF and the coastguard. I’ve got pictures of cars where
it’s up to halfway up the windows. And it’s in people’s houses and
everything. It’s awful.”
Hereford and Worcester Fire Service received more than 2,000 calls and rescued
more than 750 people. Gloucestershire Police said that the force had
attended more than 1,600 incidents in eight hours.
Andy Clift, the RNLI rapid response unit team leader, said: “I’ve never known
anything like this – all our volunteers have been deeply affected by these
extraordinary events.”
Thousands who escaped earlier, many with nothing except the clothes they were
wearing, were to spend the following two nights in emergency refuges.
Darren Carr, 34, his wife, mother and three children, spent Saturday night at
an emergency centre in Gloucester after their train was caught in the
flooding. “We are tired, fed-up and we don’t know when we are going home,”
he said. “Everyone here has been brilliant in the way they have looked after
us but we just want our own beds and a shower now.”
As the flooding brought misery to many it became a source of entertainment for
others, with thousands of tourists heading to the worst-hit areas.
“On Saturday we saw ice-cream and hot-dog vehicles pulled up alongside what we
can only call ‘floods rubber-neckers’,” said a spokesman for the West Mercia
rescue operation.
“Some are driving past clear flood warning signs and endangering themselves
and their passengers – and possibly causing more work for overstretched
emergency services.”
Emergency services in Gloucester were last night using sandbags to protect the
Walham electricity substation. However, hundreds of homes in Tewkesbury,
Gloucester and Evesham were already without power, raising fears of deserted
homes being looted.
The likelihood of severe flooding had become increasingly obvious by the time
Environment Agency experts were dispatched to join the Met Office
forecasters at their headquarters on Thursday morning. A team of forecasters
joined the agency’s key personnel at their main offices in Bristol.
However, there was little the officials could do. Rising water levels were
monitored, but many towns that bore the brunt of the flooding on Friday and
Saturday do not have flood defences. Even where the defences exist, it takes
ten hours to put them up.
At Worcester, the Environment Agency decided that staff were best deployed
checking river defences that would save thousands of households rather than
spending hours assembling temporary defences which they believed would, at
best, have protected some industrial premises and a handful of houses. In
any event, the Environment Agency argued, the expected rainfall was so high
that the defence systems would have broken up, leaving the metal poles and
sheets that form the barricades to be swept by the current down the streets.
Even when it was decided to erect the emergency barriers it was too late. The
barricades for Upton-on-Severn were stored 25 miles away in Kidderminster.
The material was loaded on to a lorry and dispatched, only to be caught in
the 10,000 vehicles trapped by floods on the M5 on Friday night.
Even those who escaped the floods are suffering. More than 350,000 people now
face being left without drinking supplies.
Severn Trent Water said that homes in the north of Gloucestershire would be
left without supplies for the next two days after a key pumping plant near
Tewkesbury was overwhelmed by the floods. The company urged customers to
conserve water, not run baths or hose down dirty areas.
Andy Smith, Severn Trent’s director of water services, said: “Even when we are
able to restart the works, it will take some time for the network and water
supplies to return to normal.” The company arranged for limited supplies to
be delivered by bowsers or mini water-tankers usually seen at the time of
drought – leading to panic buying.
As the floods began to subside last night in Worcestershire and northern
Gloucestershire, towns and villages further downstream were braced for the
worst.
Oxfordshire County Council gave a warning that it expected many residents
would be forced to spend tonight in emergency shelters.
With almost 90,000 gallons heading down the River Thames every of second, the
Environment Agency admitted that there was nothing they could do to slow
down the torrent.
David Paddington, a strategic and development planning team leader for the
Environment Agency, said: “It could be as bad as the floods of 1947 and will
definitely be comparable to the floods of 2003 when more than 200 properties
were flooded in Oxford.”
Overnight, the water was expected to hit Abingdon, Pangbourne and Purley. This
morning Reading and Caversham will bear the brunt of the water, with
Maidenhead, Windsor, Datchet, Wraysbury and Staines affected on Tuesday. Mr
Bedlington said that all lock and weir gates on the whole stretch of the
Thames had been opened to allow the water through.
“Apart from that, there is nothing else we can do. We have issued a flood
warning for the whole of the River Thames,” he said.
“The water has to take its course through the Thames until it reaches the
tidal section at Teddington Lock in London, where the problems should
subside.”
Across the country
— A wedding party of 40 people had to be rescued from Badgeworth Church,
near Staverton, in Gloucestershire.
— Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, had its wettest day on record on Friday –
126.2mm (4.97in) of rain fell. Its previous record of 70.9mm was in 1968. In
Pershore, Worcestershire, 142.6mm fell.
— Performances at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre in
Stratford-upon-Avon were cancelled on Saturday because of flooding in the
town.
— A pregnant woman who feared she had gone into labour while stranded on
the M5 near Tewkesbury was rescued by paramedics after four-and-a-half
hours. The woman, in her twenties and from Manchester, was later discharged
from hospital after doctors said it was a false alarm.
— A care home in Herefordshire was being evacuated, the fire service
said last night. About 40 elderly people were being taken from the flooded
residential home in Hampton Bishop to a nearby school for shelter.
— Thirty narrowboats became stuck on the River Avon at Stratford after
drinkers untied one, which then became trapped under a bridge and later
sank.
— Susie Chatterley and her two dogs were winched to safety after a
caravan park was badly flooded in Welford-on-Avon.
— Thousands of people were rescued from the Wakestock music festival in
Pwllheli, North Wales, on Saturday after rain washed away the main walkway.
— RSPCA officers have helped to rescue farm animals, horses and pets
caught in high water, including 200 cattle from a flooded field near Witham,
Oxfordshire.
— The Red Cross helped to rescue 20 patients from Tewkesbury Hospital
because of fears that wards would be overwhelmed.
— Nearly 30 people were trapped on the first floor of the Northwick
Hotel in Evesham. Bacon sandwiches were ferried in by rescue boats.
