Water, Water, Everywhere: Flooding

Zoë Sharp

I’ve just come back from a trip to south Wales (old rather than New) with either the cleanest car bottom ever, or the dirtiest—not sure which!

There was a huge amount of standing water all over the main roads and dual carriageways. And even the A-roads had deep puddles lurking at corners, or full flooded sections in the dips. As for the B-roads, well, I managed to get within about half a mile of my destination before I was confronted with a lake where the road should have been.

As my car is not blessed with the greatest ground clearance in the world, I decided discretion was definitely the greater part of valour. This involved reversing along a watery single-track lane for about 300 yards and finding an alternative route. Mind you, even the navigable way meant driving along several miles of what seemed to be a muddy river bed.

A glance at the UK government Flood Warning Information Service website on Saturday evening shows 106 Flood Alerts in place, meaning flooding is possible and should be prepared for. It also shows 72 Flood Warnings, meaning flooding is expected and immediate action is required.

UK government flood warnings on November 16 2019

According to the figures, there are more than five million people living in areas of the UK vulnerable to flooding every year. They used to talk about such events as happening ‘the first time in living memory’ or ‘once every hundred years’. Now they seem to have become almost annual.

I remember our home being seriously flooded while living on the Lancashire coast as a child. A high spring tide conspired with an onshore gale to send my parents’ brand new car bobbing merrily around the car park. It was not the only victim. An Isle of Man Steam Packet ship called the King Orry IV, broke its mornings and was forced aground further up the Lune estuary. It remained there until the tide level was next high enough to refloat it. 

The 'King Orry IV' forced aground at Conder Green during flooding, 1976

In the UK over recent years, Cumbria, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Berkshire, Somerset, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and even the middle of London have all suffered severe flooding. Here in Derbyshire has been hit, too. The dam at Whaley Bridge—which was holding back an estimated 1.3 million tonnes of water—started to wash away, threatening the nearby town. A woman was swept away at Darley Dale only a few weeks ago after a couple attempted to drive through water that proved too deep for their car.

The flood-damaged dam at Whaley Bridge

In the Don valley of South Yorkshire, devastating floods hit. In the last twelve years, this is the third time some residents have lost everything. Many of them could not afford the increased insurance premiums.

Flooding not only brings straightforward water damage. It can also bring the three ‘S’s—salt, silt and sewage. All of which will prove highly injurious to just about everything unfortunate enough to be soaked in it. That brand new car I mentioned was an insurance write-off at less than a month old.

Recent flooding in Yorkshire
(pic The Guardian)

Quite apart from the disease implications of having everything soaked through in effluent, however diluted, salt water kills electronics, fabrics and prevents buildings drying out without extensive remedial work. Silt ruins just about everything else that wasn’t ruined by the first two factors.

People underestimate moving water in the same way that many underestimate fire. One cubic foot of water weighs 62.43 pounds. Just six inches of fast moving water will knock your feet out from under you. Two feet will sweep away a car. Even elephants at the Nameri game reserve in India have been taken by flash flooding.

According to the National Weather Service in the US, more people are killed by flooding each year than by tornados, hurricanes or lightning. Half those who lose their lives are in vehicles at the time.

Up to a third of bridges which have experienced severe flooding are structurally unsound so that the chances of a vehicle making it to the other side are only 50/50.

Flash floods are usually caused by intense heavy rainfall and can occur at any time of year. Where I lived in the Lake District was flash-flooded in the middle of one July. However, if the ground is frozen or already saturated, or a river is blocked by storm-damaged trees or ice, this type of flooding is almost inevitable.

Increasing urbanisation—building on floodplains—leaves properties in danger of river floods when a river bursts its banks. The clue can often be found in the old English name of the place, however. There is currently a Flood Warning in operation at Fishlake in South Yorkshire.

I have made a mental note never to buy a house anywhere called Waterside Meadows…

This week’s Word of the Week is noyade, meaning an execution by drowning, like the mass executions carried out between November 1793 and February 1794 at Nantes, France, during the Reign of Terror. From the French noyer, to drown, and the Latin necāre, to put to death, from which root we also get necro-.