mega storms uk next week

oldbag said:
it's been raining for almost all of Jan
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Here lies the crux of the problem.

The government, the army, environment agency etc. can not stop the rain.

But also to to play devils advocate, why should we spend huge amounts of public money protecting large areas where few people live to protect their lively hood?

It should be cheaper to build them a house not on a flood plain and move them there...
 
What are the Army supposed to do? Shoot the rain back into the sky?

There is nothing that could have been done when the rain started falling to prevent the situation we are in now.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
But also to to play devils advocate, why should we spend huge amounts of public money protecting large areas where few people live to protect their lively hood?
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This is what it boils down to - the cost of establishing and maintaining flood defences everywhere in the country for a once in a lifetime occurrence would be enormous. The government has to prioritise and farmland just doesn't rate.
 
Lysander said:
I thought we already ascertained that dredging the rivers does nothing. And sending the army in earlier... hindsight. Hindsight only.
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all i know that i own a few meadows which has what is called a main drain running tue them (it about 3 meters wide and it deep) and for the last 5 winters they have flooded badly. this summer we got the DOE to clean it out (same as dredging) and repair the banks, guess what this winter it yet to flood. so if it works on this small scale why does it not work on a large scale like doing a whole river.

But also to to play devils advocate, why should we spend huge amounts of public money protecting large areas where few people live to protect their lively hood?
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as a farmer i have to say that i fair point why should you pay (as in the government), it because you wont let us do it. if a group of farmers who land was flooded in a "once in a life time" flood that seems to be happing every few years now, want to build some dikes to protect there lands the amount of red tape would make the job impossible.
next if i did get a dike build it only stops my land from flooding but the water is still there so all i've done is pass the problem on to some one down the river and what you end up with is a mess of some area with flood protection and some area with none.
what happens if the government does it (right), we get a PLAN. they can come to me and say guess what if there heavy heavy rain you land may flood and because it a flood plane that ok because that what it meant to do BUT we cleaned (dredged) out the river and maintained the banks so the flood water will drain from your land as fast as possible. and i can go " that fair enough"

or the short answer, because the government is the only one with the power and authority to be able to control what happens on the hundreds of miles that a river flows
 
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Caged said:
What are the Army supposed to do? Shoot the rain back into the sky?

There is nothing that could have been done when the rain started falling to prevent the situation we are in now.
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So should we invest in better flood defenses or should we just give and "at your own risk" stance for people buying on a flood area?
 
That's a decision that has to be made based on whether it's viable economically for each case I would have thought. Heavily defending one area from flooding only moves the problem somewhere else, it doesn't make the water disappear, so building defenses gets very expensive very quickly.
 
The rivers would need to have been dredged twice as wide and twice as deep and they still wouldn't have coped with the "high magnitude of flow" required to contain it.

Ergo dredging a few feet of silt off the edges wouldn't have made a jots worth of difference, that's why.
 
oldbag said:
Why does it do nothing? And it's been raining for almost all of Jan, are you saying nothing could have been done to help?
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Btone said:
all i know that i own a few meadows which has what is called a main drain running tue them (it about 3 meters wide and it deep) and for the last 5 winters they have flooded badly. this summer we got the DOE to clean it out (same as dredging) and repair the banks, guess what this winter it yet to flood. so if it works on this small scale why does it not work on a large scale like doing a whole river.
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I actually just came across this by chance in New Scientist.

Dredging would not have stopped massive UK floods

Much of southern England is underwater thanks to a record-breaking deluge that has fallen over two months. More than 5000 homes have flooded in the Thames valley and Somerset. Many of the people affected complain that rivers should have been dredged to allow the water to escape faster. But hydrologists say dredging alone would have made little difference. The only way is to manage entire catchment areas, or in the case of Somerset, perhaps build an artificial lagoon.

As the waters rose, residents blamed the Environment Agency and its embattled chief Chris Smith for failing to allow floodwater to escape by adequately dredging rivers.

But hydrologists contacted by New Scientist say that dredging alone would not have stopped the flooding. "Given the amount of rain that has fallen, you could have doubled the carrying capacity of every drainage channel in Somerset, at huge cost, and large parts would still have flooded," says Hannah Cloke at the University of Reading.
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i accept that given the amount of rain that nothing would have stop the flooding. but dredging as part of a proper water management plan, would help the water get away faster which would have meant the flooding may not have been as bad, and those place that were flooded would not be flooded as long
 
Rroff said:
Wouldn't have stopped it no but it would have reduced the impact, a lot of the big problem areas atm around where I am built up on top of 8-10inches of already standing water that in bygone times would have already drained away.
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They could have done a lot during the droughts.



This is what British Government reminds me of.

Don't post youtube vids with swearing in please!
 
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86JR said:
Lots of floods here in Cornwall. This time round I am staying in and not driving my Audi into them.
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Haha I almost commented on that earlier but thought it would have been unfair.

Actually, haven't you got a different car now?
 
Just watching the news and frankly it's ******* me off... They've got some local woman being interviewed in Berkshire or somewhere saying:

"It was so awful, everything was getting so difficult and morale was just at an all time low, we didn't know how much longer we could cope, but finally they sent in the army and the police and firemen etc..."

It's only been flooding in the South East for like a week!!! :rolleyes: Meanwhile the West was pretty much totally submerged for the best part of a month and there was barely any response to it at all :mad: But suddenly

"ooooohhh my antique fine china is getting a bit damp, at this rate my chandeliers might dip in the water - call in the troops, this is serious business!!!"

I know people in this thread have said that there are more homes and stuff in the South East so of course they take it more seriously but that is just a real crappy attitude imo - why should anyone in the country matter less than anyone else when there is a crisis?
 
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