ladyofastolat | Floods

"Worst floods in Britain in modern history", one newspaper said today. Somewhere else said that the rescue operation is the largest peacetime military operation ever. I feel very guilty for feeling jealous of my parents' 130mm of rain on Friday. Looking at the post-apocalyptic scenes on television is very powerful, especially since my parents are caught up in it (though not as badly as many*), and it's my childhood haunts that are ruined under the brown water.

I have a weakness for post-apocalyptic stories, even though they always give me bad dreams. There's something terrifying and thrilling about how fragile our grip on civilisation is. Take out one pumping station, and 350,000 people are without fresh water. Take out one power station, and a county is without electricity. Blockade a few refineries, as happened a few years ago, and the entire country comes to a halt, no-one able to go anywhere. There are so many things that make our lives more comfortable than the lives of our forefathers, but they are so utterly dependent on other people. We don't grow our own food or get our own water from a well or travel only the places we can reach on our own feet. It is so terrifyingly easy to take down our whole infrastructure, and we're lost, totally unable to look after ourselves.

However, I find the human nature side of it strangely comforting. Post-apocalyptic stories often show law and order totally breaking down, and people reverting to savagery and violence. I prefer to think that decency would survive. Yes, there has been some looting, and there have been some horrid attempts to make profit out of people's desperation for water, but there have also been so many cases of people going out of their way for others. My Mum knows lots of people who put refugees up on Friday night, or who were out in the torrential rain shovelling piles of silt and mud from the doors of even older people. There have been images of people risking their lives to get others out of trapped cars or houses. Some people are trying to steal water, but most people are orderly queuing. There are lots of nasty people around, and they hit the headlines, but I think most people are okay, and that order and decency prevails even in the worst situations. Awful things happen, but life returns to normal afterwards.

* My Mum phoned as I was writing, and they've been told that it might be four weeks before they have fresh water. Eeek! It's their Ruby Wedding in two weeks, and we're visiting them for a nice dinner and celebration. Maybe we should just invite them here instead. Apparently Winchcombe was filmed for the main BBC news today, so I'm off to watch.

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The 2007 floods are bad (I'm assuming that the newspaper in question is referring to all of the flooding and not just this week's that affected nice southern people and not those nasty northern types) and very widespread. I would hate to be without water for four weeks!

But worst in modern British history?

Bollocks.

Four inches of rain fell in one afternoon on Friday in some parts of the country. So far, I think eight (?) people have died in the two separate instances.

In May 1912, FIVE inches fell near Louth in Lincolnshire, the village was pretty much destroyed and 22 people died.

Three months later that year, Brundall in Norfolk experienced EIGHT inches in one day. Six months later much of Norfolk was still underwater. SIX MONTHS!

And in August of that year, NINE inches fell on Exmoor and the Devon town of Lynmouth was devastated. More than 30 people were killed.

Then there were the 1947 floods. Apparently in total, something like 45,000 properties have been affected this year. In 1947, 100,000 properties were flooded, and much more farmland was submerged.

So I reckon the rankings for worst modern British floods are:

1st 1912
2nd 1947
3rd 2007

Are you sure Lynmouth was flooded in 1912? the famous flood is 1952, if they were flooded in 1912 as well, that makes 1952 look quite careless, in terms of building in silly places...

No, you're right - I misread my source.

OK, howabout:

1952
1912
1947
2007

I knew that the newspaper (the Independent, I think - I just saw it in a shop) was overstating it, but, really, I don't think it matters. Something doesn't have to be the biggest or the worst to still be pretty awful. (Maybe by "modern history" it meant "within living memory of me, the reporter"? Maybe it shows something about the modern world that newspapers always want to show that this is the biggest or greatest or worst... whatever since... whatever.) To someone who's lost their house, it doesn't really matter if it's the 950th worst flood ever, it's still the one that affects them.

I had a holiday in Lynmouth when I was a teenager, and remember being really moved and horrified by accounts of its flood - and really impressed by the huge channel they'd built for their small river, to try to stop it happening again.

I strongly suspect it depends how you are defining worst. Lynmouth was a tragedy, there's no doubt about that, but it affected one small town on one night.

As for 1947, the current indication are that in Tewkesbury at least, the water is reaching higher levels now than it did then. I haven't heard any firm evidence about Gloucester, but all indications are that the water is at least coming close to 1947 levels.

I suspect, though, that the paper was taking into consideration the 300 thousand plus people whose water has been cut off and the anywhere from 250 to 600 thousand (they don't seem to be able to make up their minds) whose power supplies are also threatened. That's what's making this a major national news story, I think. If it was just Tewkesbury, or even Gloucester, they flood more winters than not, but this has made it clear to people just how fragile our infrastructure can be.

How is it with you? Are you waterless?

We're actually not doing too badly, our water hasn't gone off yet. For some reasons (at least parts of) Fairview, Pittville and further up the road seem not to have run out, though we're not sure why.

We're still being very careful with it, on the grounds there must be a limited supply coming from somewhere but we don't know how long it will last.

The water is off at work, so that's entertaining. The arrangements to get water to where people can collect it from seem to be working well, though, so we're not too worried. (They're giving out bottled water from the old coach station car park.)

We saw Winchcombe on the news, and thought of you and your parents. I hope they are doing okay.

*hugs*

Curses! I missed it. I recorded the 6 o'clock news, but missed the first few minutes. I forgot to look out for the 10 o'clock news.

My parents are on slightly higher ground, so are okay flood-wise, except for lots of mud from the hill behind them coming whooshing down into the road outside their house. It's the lack of water that's the big thing now.

I also feel the magic of the floods. Think it may be too much Gormenghast at an early age.

Not sure about the post-apocalyptic stories. Possibly I've read too many of them, but at the moment I would say that we are in stage 1) catastrophe: authorities battling against the problem, neighbourliness, appeals for calm - ie, too early for full breakdown.

I don't think you get breakdown of law and order until about stage 3) catastrophe (government in collapse, hunger, roving bands). This is usually the point at which Our Hero gives up on his own smallscale rescue attempts and decides to leave the city for the countryside.

I think we're somewhere between stage 1 and stage 2. Stage 1 is, I think, Business as Usual. "This isn't happening. It will all be solved with a nice cup of tea. Blitz spirit. Keep smiling through. They will sort of it." Stage 2 is the "OMG it is happening. What now?" which leads to a mixture of responses. In this case, it's slightly different since everyone involves knows this isn't really the End of the World, and that They will fix it, so we're not seeing the proper application of the Post-Apocalyptic Response Scale.

Stage 2 is, I think, the time that law and order breaks down. Most people hide at home, still clinging to the Stage 1 mentality. Nasty people set up gangs and try to charge tolls and protection fees, and there is lots of looting. Some people set up short-lived communities devoted to old-fashioned values and the casting out of sinners.

I agree with you on stage 3 regarding the hero's retreat from the cities. In stage 4 the baddies rule, but the goodies are slowly setting up small communes in the country. In stage 5, the baddies have all killed each other, and the goodies are able to set up their own new world order from the ashes of the old. Either that, or They have finally got their act together and rebuild the world complete with all the faults of the old one, and it will all happen again.

It depends on the cause of the apocalypse, of course. I'm fond of Plague ones, but don't like to read Nuclear War ones. Plague particularly lends themselves to the "this isn't happening and will all be cured by a nice cup of tea" approach. Nuclear War... well, doesn't. English apocalypses are also much more prone to the "nice cup of tea" approach. American ones tend to launch into stage 2 rather quicker.

And of course the "nice cup of tea" approach has the advantage of using boiled water, so it's safer to drink. Practical as well as comforting :-) I hope your parents continue to escape the floods and mud.

Floods

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