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England battered by Torrential rains, Tornadoes
• Thousands evacuated as dam cracks in Yorkshire; Weather "off the scale"
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By
Urban Cowgirl, Contributing editor
Thursday,
5 July, 2007
Latest News UK Floods 5 July 2007
The leader of the devastated flood-hit city of Hull pleaded for millions of pounds of government aid on Thursday to help repair the damage, amid local concerns its difficulties were being ignored.
Council Leader Carl Minns said the bill for repairing flooded schools alone could be as much as 100 million pounds.
"Last week a class of children finished their GCSE exams ankle-deep in water," he told BBC radio. "We need tens of millions of pounds of help from the government."
Local MP, Health Secretary Alan Johnson, said people in Hull felt they were being ignored because of the relatively remote eastern location of the city on the River Humber. "Hull is probably worse affected than any part of Yorkshire," he told BBC radio.
Large areas of Yorkshire, the Midlands and Humberside were swamped last week by successive waves of torrential rain as rivers burst their banks and drains overflowed.
Most of the city of Hull lies below sea level and there have been complaints from residents that the drains had not been cleaned for over 2 years and recently building had been allowed on the flood plain of the river Humber. Local fire services says due to the low lying ground there has been nowhere to pump away the water.
Communities Minister John Healey was due to visit Hull on Thursday afternoon after going to see flood-hit areas in Sheffield with Communities Secretary Hazel Blears who told Sky News: "I'm sure we can do more and we have got to make sure the whole of government is focused on this."
A spokeswoman for her department denied that Hull had been neglected. Funding was available for local authorities to pay for clean-up costs not otherwise covered by existing insurance, she said, with councils having been given a month to assess how much money was needed.
Council Leader Minns said public sector infrastructure had been "devastated" across large swathes of Hull. As many as 17,000 homes in the city have been affected by the flooding, he added. Up to 30,000people are reported to be homeless across the region with many having lost all their possessions in the flooding amid fears that pollution and looting are starting to occur.
Update 26 June 2007 Flood Relief funding cut back: Government papers seen by the Guardian newspaper show that spending on national flood defences will not be increased until 2011, despite warnings from insurers, the Environment Agency, and the National Audit Office that one in two defences is inadequate. and up to £250m a year needs to be invested to avert further major flooding.
More than £200m of budget cuts were forced on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by the Treasury last year to make up a shortfall following late subsidy payments to farmers. But the Guardian understands that the Treasury also demanded further cuts in flood defence spending in the past few weeks. (Ends)
M1 closed as dam cracks in South Yorkshire
Hundreds of people have fled their homes in three villages in South Yorkshire amid fears a dam is about to burst after torrential rain. Engineers are trying to reinforce the wall holding back the Ulley reservoir near Rotherham after cracks appeared.
About 100 homes in the villages of Catcliffe, Whiston and Canklow were cleared by police officers overnight after engineers signalled a warning over the dam wall of the 35-acre Ulley reservoir, in a country park south of Rotherham.
Fire crews are pumping water out of the reservoir in a bid to ease the pressure on the dam.
Asked about the chances of the dam bursting, Ch Supt Matthew Jukes, of South Yorkshire Police, said: "It's pretty difficult to tell at the moment to be absolutely frank.
"The situation is stable and there are some fine judgements being made, and obviously in the context of making those fine judgements we're taking that cautious approach to keeping people safe."
"We have taken people away from their homes, so hopefully the risk to life will be very limited, but clearly there's a substantial risk of damage to property and that's the one we're trying to mitigate." The residents who left their homes were taken to the safety of nearby Dinnington Comprehensive School as a precaution.
The M1 motorway has been closed between junctions 32 and 36 because it would be flooded if the dam burst.
South Yorkshire's Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes said: "It's not just the fact that the dam might break and the wall of water will rush to the motorway, it's also the fact that that water may take out a couple of pylons that are carrying 270,000 volts of power."
Fears over the dam followed chaotic scenes across the Sheffield area caused by torrential rain on Monday which turned roads into churning rivers of flood water.
"Off the scale floods" wreak havoc in Sheffield
Parts of central Sheffield resembled a bomb site after the area saw the most rain since records began 125 years ago. Three RAF rescue helicopters were brought in to help pluck people to safety from their roofs and 900 people are now in emergency shelters.
At a news conference on 26th June, police and city council representatives paid tribute to the "resilience" of the emergency services and the people of Sheffield.
They said there had been "significant damage" to the city. No figure has yet been calculated to assess the cost of the damage, but it would run into " hundreds of millions". The scenes were described as "unprecedented" and, in the view of the Environment Agency, "off the scale".
Over 13,000 people have been left without power by the flooding. Power company YEDL said its engineers may need to wait until the water subsides before they can get the remaining homes reconnected
A 68-year-old man and a teenage boy died in separate incidents in Sheffield and a 28-year-old man was killed after becoming stuck in a drain in Hull.
Gas Main cracked in Shropshire
Rising flood water caused Burway Bridge in Ludlow to give way, severing a gas main and causing 20 homes in nearby Corve Street to be evacuated
West Mercia Police said a number of street lights fell into the river causing several small explosions.
A severe flood warning remains for the river from Ludlow down to Worcester. No-one was injured and gas and electricity officials are at the scene.
"It's a main bridge into the town centre," a police spokesman said.
"About 30 to 40 people have been affected and are now at Ludlow Leisure Centre - fortunately Tesco was open so people could get refreshments first."
Lincolnshire has also suffered badly from the floods with many towns under water and several tornadoes sighted
Elsewhere weather conditions are easing after severe flooding across England.
More bad weather is however on the way. It is caused by a "kink" in the Jet Stream according to weather experts. See "Calm before the coming storm" article in "The World Around us".
(Taken from BBC News reports)
The Naked Reader 2007
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