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Floods subside but misery remains
• Row erupts over bonuses paid to Environment Agency chiefs
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By
Jonathan Brown , Indie correspondent
Wednesday,
1 August, 2007
The filthy brown flood waters may have subsided but the tide of human misery they have left in their wake is relentlessly swelling. Few aspects of everyday life across huge swathes of central England have been unaffected by the unprecedented deluge of last weekend.
It will be many weeks before normality returns.
The grim task of sifting through possessions was already under way yesterday. A steadily mounting pile of soaked and soiled items seemed to stand guard at every front door, waiting to come under the calculating eye of the insurance loss adjustor.
For more than 350,000 people in Gloucestershire the most pressing issue was not the loss of possessions, many of them prized. The biggest problem remains the lack of clean water after the county's main treatment plant was knocked out.
Communities which only a few weeks ago were coping with little more than the inconvenience of the wretched British summer, were told it could be up to two weeks before they are reconnected to the mains water supply. In the meantime they must queue for bottled water or fill containers at 900 bowsers in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Stroud. The council also issued an urgent plea for portable lavatories.
There were warnings of a mounting health risk from thousands of gallons of sewage and toxic chemicals that have spilled into homes, gardens and streets in recent days. The Health Protection Agency urged people to keep out of the water to avoid contact with potentially fatal microbes such as E.coli. The agency also warned of a sharp rise in stress-related illnesses as a result of the flooding.
Tewkesbury, cut off by the flooded Severn and Avon rivers, yesterday remained little more than a ghost town with hotels ordered to close to guests, many of them stranded tourists, because of the lack of flushing lavatories. Joe Bishop, a manager at the Bell Hotel, where water continued to lap around the historic building, said staff had worked round the clock to stay open.
"The water level is going down a bit but we've run out of water, food, beer and linen and we've been told to close as a hotel. We've still got quite a few guests so I don't know where they are going to sleep tonight," he said.
In Gloucester, half of the city's shops were closed due to a lack of fresh water as the main A40 route into town remained impassable to traffic. In Cheltenham pubs, restaurants and cafes currently at the height of the tourist season were severely affected. Those that had built of reserves of water were doing a thriving trade in the much-needed sunshine, though most were expected to close as stockpiled supplies ran out.
The Association of British Insurers said its members had received 8,000 new claims since Saturday, 80 per cent of them from those whose homes had been flooded; that figure was set to rise. The cost of the summer floods in damage to property and loss of business rose to £2bn, insurers said, although one analyst put the figure at £3bn for repairs to damaged roads, railway lines and bridges alone.
"Give your bonuses to relief effort," flood victims tell EA chiefs
As the waters receded, victims responded angrily to news that five-figure sums were paid to nine Environment Agency execs as a “reward” for meeting targets to protect the UK.
People driven from their homes after the storms demanded they hand the money back last night. John Edwards, 63, queuing for water in Gloucs, said: “They should spend it on flood defences or to help victims.”
Environment Agency boss Baroness Young, a Scottish peer and friend of PM Gordon Brown, topped the bonus table with a £24,000 lump sum on top of her £163,000 salary. Last night the agency insisted the “modest” bonuses were paid to reflect success “across a range of objectives”.
But in ten years the alarm has been sounded about the flood risk in 25 Government reports — all ignored. The National Audit Office found defences below par in over half of high-risk areas.
Oxford flood expert Prof Dieter Helm said: “The management of flood defences has been a sorry tale.”The taxman stands to make £1billion from VAT on repairs to flood-damaged buildings. At least 15,000 homes were hit.
The Naked Reader 2007
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