Rescue operations in Wales, submerged railway lines in Cornwall – these events are ever more common. So why have we utterly failed to prepare?
As autumn blurs into winter, the news is once again filling up with a familiar story: overflowing rivers, inundated streets and overwhelmed infrastructure. Since Friday, England, Wales and Ireland have been hit by the storm the Spanish meteorological agency has elegantly named Claudia, with grim results. One place in particular massively bore the brunt of it all: the Welsh border town of Monmouth, where the raging River Monnow spilled into the streets, people had to be rescued from their homes and drones captured aerial views of the scene, showing fragile-looking buildings suddenly surrounded by a huge clay-brown swamp.
Claudia and her effects made it into the national headlines – but mostly, local and regional floods now seem too mundane to attract that kind of attention. Eleven days ago, Cumbria saw submerged roads, blocked drains and over 250 flood-related problems reported to the relevant councils. Railway lines in Cornwall were submerged; in Carmarthen, in west Wales, there were reports of the worst floods in living memory. But beyond the areas affected, who heard about these stories? Such comparatively small events, it seems, are now only to be expected.
Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines: November 2012, Tyringham, Bucks. (Image: T. Larkum)
There have recently been reminders of how floods are only going to get more disruptive and dramatic. In mid-October, the insurance giant Aviva published a report titled Building Future Communities 2025, which was full of unsettling facts: among them, that over the past 10 years, one in 13 new homes have been built in the highest-risk flood zones; and that by 2050, the number of properties at risk from flooding could rise by 25% to 8m. It was accompanied by a Guardian article warning that “some towns may have to be abandoned”, a prospect that might already be flickering to life: in the Worcestershire town of Tenbury Wells, where there have been floods four times in the past six years, the council is already adjusting to the fact that the local civic buildings are now simply uninsurable.
Read more: The Guardian