Flooded English villagers may huddle in trailers until Christmas
Friday, 17 August 2007
Alex Morales
The first floor of Nicola Caster's two-bedroom house is empty, except for four dehumidifiers and a pair of fans that drone constantly to remove the damp left behind by floods that swept through northern England in late June. She and her family live in a trailer parked next door.
``We might not be in for Christmas,'' Caster said while cradling her 2-year-old daughter, Holly, outside their home in the village of Catcliffe. ``Seeing my little girl very upset -- that's what broke my heart more than anything.''
Six weeks after floods inundated 32,000 homes and businesses across the region, life in northern cities such as Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster is far from normal, and victims face months of upheaval before their properties are restored.
In late July, a second wave of flooding hit southern cities, including Oxford, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, bringing damages from record summer rains to at least 3 billion pounds ($6 billion), according to the Association of British Insurers. Meteorologists at the U.K. Met Office predict global warming will increase the frequency of intense storms.
At Catcliffe, a village south of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, dozens of homes were immersed in up to seven feet (2.1 meters) of water, and dumpsters filled with ruined furniture and appliances still dot the roadside.
Caster, her husband, Jason, and daughter moved into the cramped trailer provided by their insurer last week after spending five weeks with family members. Living next to their house enables them to guard their property, said Caster, 33.
From the outside, their brown-brick home looks immaculate. Inside, floors and carpets have been ripped out and plaster stripped off the walls. All that remains of the kitchen are a few tiles and a ruined water heater.
Caster says she plans to buy a television ``because we need something to entertain us.''
Around the corner at the Plough pub, manager Andrew Rogerson marked a red line 4 1/2 feet up the fireplace to show how high the waters reached. The flood destroyed stock in the cellar on June 25, a month after Rogerson and his wife, Sandra, moved in, and 18 days after the pub opened. The smell of stagnant water lingers in the air.
``It was a dream for me to run a pub,'' says Rogerson, 44, gesturing toward the interior, where the wallpaper is peeling away to shoulder height. ``The earliest we'll be open will be in four to six weeks.''
This year's inundations raised concerns about the number of houses being built on flood plains as the government plans to build 2 million homes by 2016 to address a housing shortage. On July 23, Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said construction near the mouth of the river Thames, which runs through London, would go ahead.
Charles Brown, who moved to Catcliffe three weeks before the floods, hadn't even finished unpacking his boxes before the rising waters ruined most of his possessions. The computer programmer from Atlanta said it's not realistic to stop building in flood-prone areas.
``What they need to do -- and this is what I hope comes out of this -- is to put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle this,'' he said.
That view is supported by the Environment Agency, which is responsible for England's flood defenses and says improved drainage and the construction of lagoons to divert run-off can help reduce flooding.
``Climate change models say we can expect more flooding, and it will be more severe,'' said Mark Southgate, head of planning at the agency. ``We need to look at how we deal with urban flooding: the interconnection of drains and sewers and roads.''
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said last month that the country's annual flood-defense budget will be increased by a third to 800 million pounds.
The Yorkshire and Humber region was the hardest hit by the northern floods. In Hull, one in 10 properties was affected, and in Sheffield, 1,260 homes were damaged. Dozens of stores remained closed last week in Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping center, one of Britain's biggest.
In Doncaster borough, northeast of Sheffield, more than 5,000 homes and businesses were flooded, and waters didn't recede completely in the village of Toll Bar for 12 days, amid the biggest pumping operation in U.K. history. That left six inches of gray sludge across roads, gardens and homes, says Kathleen Cooper, 63, who was uninsured and lost all the furniture in ground floor of her publicly owned house.
Cooper, her daughter Diane, 41, and granddaughter Amy, 10, may live in a mobile home for as much as 18 months while the council cleans and refits properties.
``It's like when you get your first home, you can't get it all at once,'' says Cooper, who remembers the last time Toll Bar flooded in 1947. ``You have to build it up gradually.''
Bloomberg
The first floor of Nicola Caster's two-bedroom house is empty, except for four dehumidifiers and a pair of fans that drone constantly to remove the damp left behind by floods that swept through northern England in late June. She and her family live in a trailer parked next door.
``We might not be in for Christmas,'' Caster said while cradling her 2-year-old daughter, Holly, outside their home in the village of Catcliffe. ``Seeing my little girl very upset -- that's what broke my heart more than anything.''
Six weeks after floods inundated 32,000 homes and businesses across the region, life in northern cities such as Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster is far from normal, and victims face months of upheaval before their properties are restored.
In late July, a second wave of flooding hit southern cities, including Oxford, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, bringing damages from record summer rains to at least 3 billion pounds ($6 billion), according to the Association of British Insurers. Meteorologists at the U.K. Met Office predict global warming will increase the frequency of intense storms.
At Catcliffe, a village south of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, dozens of homes were immersed in up to seven feet (2.1 meters) of water, and dumpsters filled with ruined furniture and appliances still dot the roadside.
Caster, her husband, Jason, and daughter moved into the cramped trailer provided by their insurer last week after spending five weeks with family members. Living next to their house enables them to guard their property, said Caster, 33.
From the outside, their brown-brick home looks immaculate. Inside, floors and carpets have been ripped out and plaster stripped off the walls. All that remains of the kitchen are a few tiles and a ruined water heater.
Caster says she plans to buy a television ``because we need something to entertain us.''
Around the corner at the Plough pub, manager Andrew Rogerson marked a red line 4 1/2 feet up the fireplace to show how high the waters reached. The flood destroyed stock in the cellar on June 25, a month after Rogerson and his wife, Sandra, moved in, and 18 days after the pub opened. The smell of stagnant water lingers in the air.
``It was a dream for me to run a pub,'' says Rogerson, 44, gesturing toward the interior, where the wallpaper is peeling away to shoulder height. ``The earliest we'll be open will be in four to six weeks.''
This year's inundations raised concerns about the number of houses being built on flood plains as the government plans to build 2 million homes by 2016 to address a housing shortage. On July 23, Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said construction near the mouth of the river Thames, which runs through London, would go ahead.
Charles Brown, who moved to Catcliffe three weeks before the floods, hadn't even finished unpacking his boxes before the rising waters ruined most of his possessions. The computer programmer from Atlanta said it's not realistic to stop building in flood-prone areas.
``What they need to do -- and this is what I hope comes out of this -- is to put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle this,'' he said.
That view is supported by the Environment Agency, which is responsible for England's flood defenses and says improved drainage and the construction of lagoons to divert run-off can help reduce flooding.
``Climate change models say we can expect more flooding, and it will be more severe,'' said Mark Southgate, head of planning at the agency. ``We need to look at how we deal with urban flooding: the interconnection of drains and sewers and roads.''
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said last month that the country's annual flood-defense budget will be increased by a third to 800 million pounds.
The Yorkshire and Humber region was the hardest hit by the northern floods. In Hull, one in 10 properties was affected, and in Sheffield, 1,260 homes were damaged. Dozens of stores remained closed last week in Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping center, one of Britain's biggest.
In Doncaster borough, northeast of Sheffield, more than 5,000 homes and businesses were flooded, and waters didn't recede completely in the village of Toll Bar for 12 days, amid the biggest pumping operation in U.K. history. That left six inches of gray sludge across roads, gardens and homes, says Kathleen Cooper, 63, who was uninsured and lost all the furniture in ground floor of her publicly owned house.
Cooper, her daughter Diane, 41, and granddaughter Amy, 10, may live in a mobile home for as much as 18 months while the council cleans and refits properties.
``It's like when you get your first home, you can't get it all at once,'' says Cooper, who remembers the last time Toll Bar flooded in 1947. ``You have to build it up gradually.''
Bloomberg