Community Resilience Workshop Chichester 19 September 2013 1
What it is like to be Flooded Presentation by Jane Smeaton Notes for Powerpoint Slides Slide 1 I live in Felpham near Bognor Regis I have been asked to talk to you about what it is like to be flooded, how it has affected me and my community, how we responded Before I do that let me ask ‐ who in the audience has been flooded inside their house, and who has had flooding in their gardens? Those of you who have flooded inside their houses will know how dreadful it is but for those who have so far escaped completely or who this time around had a near miss I hope I can give you just a sense of how devastating it is. Slide 2 ‐ 11 th June 2012 That is a date that I will never forget. My world was turned upside down by a flood. What really shocked me was that I never actually thought that we were at risk of flooding. Complacent, naive? Maybe but why would I think otherwise? Not only had I lived in my house for 16 years but I knew the history of the house since 1982 – and there had been no floods. You’d think 30 years flood free would be a pretty good guide to risk wouldn’t you? Well no obviously it is not. Let me tell you about the events of that night. 2
11.00 pm With the benefit of hindsight this was the first indication that something was building. Torrential rain began and locking up for the night I noticed that the gutters were not just overflowing but that the water was pouring from them in a complete sheet like a heavy waterfall. I kept an eye on this but after about 20 minutes the rain stopped so reassured I went to bed. 3.00 am The bell went – one of those horrible awakenings that only ever lead to bad news, and sure enough it was very bad. Opening our front upstairs window we saw our neighbours in our front garden. “You need to get down here” they said “we flooded just after 2.00am and the water is now coming your way.” So jolted awake but not quite with it we pulled on clothes found our wellington boots and headed outside. It’s hard to describe our feelings at that point – our house being 18 inches higher than theirs we still thought we’d be okay but then we’d never seen water in our drive before. We opened the garage door to get to buckets and brooms and saw that there was already two inches of water in the garage. That’s when we knew that this time it was different, but even then the sense of denial kicks in – it will only be the garage we thought we can deal with that. Our neighbours gave us some sandbags and we piled them up in front of the garage to stop any additional water entering and we started bailing out to stop the water level rising. We monitored the changes in the depth of the water at the end of our road by watching it rise with reference to the courses in a brick wall. We knew that if the drainage system worked as it should then we were only at risk until the tide turned and exposed the end of the outfall pipe – at which point the water should have gushed out to sea. 3
Fire and Rescue Those of us who know what fantastic work they do felt a sense of relief when the Fire and Rescue Service arrived – but it was not to last – they told us that they were unable to pump the water away because the surrounding areas were all under water and there was nowhere to pump the water to. We and our neighbours were on our own to cope as best we could. This is something else people probably don’t think about – we have amazing emergency services in this country and we feel reassured by the thought that they will come to our rescue when we need them – but flooding is a force of nature and not always to be stopped. 9.30am We thought we had made it when the water level fell by half a brick – but then out of the blue it rose suddenly; it looked to us as if a blockage had been cleared upstream and had sent a sudden surge of water down to us. At that point we lost the fight we were completely overwhelmed and at 9.30 am the water started to enter our house. Can I ask you to picture us – we had been up since 3.00am, and bailing out water ‐ filthy water – a mix of rainwater and sewage from the overflowing drains for more than 6 hours in a desperate attempt to protect our home. We were tired, we were cold, we were wet ‐ and in the end it made no difference at all. Slide 3 ‐ Helpless I have entitled this slide ‘helpless’ because that is how we felt. Once the water started to enter our home we felt lost. The water entered from all directions at once, through the air bricks, through the doors, up through the floors – it was unstoppable and rose to a height of 6 4
inches in minutes – throughout the ground floor, and yes it was the filthy water that I’ve already mentioned brown, dirty, smelly and very cold – even in June. Think about your own home – if 6 inches of contaminated water entered the ground floor of your home what would you do? What we did was to go from room to room in disbelief and a strange mix of fascination and horror. Having stared at this water briefly we started grabbing things to try to save them but we didn’t have time to think about what we really wanted so we grabbed the obvious – for example we saved our TV, how ridiculous is that, it’s plastic and electronics, why on earth did we bother with it? While we were saving that we lost all our important documents – and we are still trying to piece together the information that we lost. We lost things that we will never replace – photographs, old books that are now out of print – not valuable in monetary terms but valuable to us. If we had known the flooding was coming we could have saved more of the things that mattered but that is a lesson we learnt the hard way. The water finally reached 18 inches throughout the ground floor. That was when it finally dawned on us just how much we had lost. We had ploughed all our money into our home and had just spent the last two years using all our free time to work round the ground floor room by room re ‐ plastering, painting, and laying hard wood floors. We had done all that work ourselves and in no ‐ time at all it was all ruined. Slides 4 ‐ 8 Photos of the flooding 5
Slide 9 ‐ Caramel This is a photo of one of my cats – Caramel. The most distressing part of the flood event was that we thought we had lost her. We had rounded up our other cats and shut them in our bedroom but there was no sign of Melly. We searched everywhere and had visions of her pinned under the dark water by something that had fallen over. We dreaded the thought that we had lost her and that when the water finally receded that we would find a little furry body. I can’t describe to you how upset we were at that point; it was the worst moment of all. I don’t know if any of you have pets but if you do imagine how you would feel in that situation. Finally though something good happened – a little face appeared from underneath our wardrobe – how she got under there I don’t know as there is only a tiny gap. Melly was terrified but safe – the sense of relief was amazing and we needed it. It brought a sense of perspective to the devastation and just for a brief while we could forget about it. Slide 10 ‐ That night But of course it hadn’t gone away and we had to decide what to do next. We were advised to leave our home but that is easier said than done when you have pets, when you are cold, wet, absolutely exhausted, and as we realised afterwards in shock. We were not functioning properly and looking back we did many of the wrong things – we waded about in water that we couldn’t see through, including in the road where the manhole covers had blown off. The water was so deep it was over the tops of our wellington boots, it was obviously contaminated. The electricity was still on in 6
our house and probably in all of our neighbours, as was the gas – who knows what could have happened. In this relaxed environment this all seems obvious but believe me you just don’t think about it at the time. We were just too tired to leave our house; too tired to think where to go and what to do we just wanted to get clean and sleep. We decided to stay in our house that night and think about what to do in the morning. It was horrible – imagine lying in bed and listening to water lapping about in the ground floor of your house – wondering what it is doing, whether it is rising – and the smell! During the night my husband was physically sick and in fact for many weeks afterwards he would wake in the middle of the night and put his hand down to the floor to check for water. Slide 11 ‐ Next Day In the morning the water was still there, in fact it stayed in the house for 36 hours – doing even more damage as it soaked into the plaster the bricks and the floors. We knew we couldn’t spend another night in our home but where would we go? The area had been hit with flooding and it was June in a holiday resort– rental properties had been snapped up, hotels were full and in any case they wouldn’t take cats and no way would we leave them. The insurance company said ‘just book in somewhere’ – but back on Planet Earth that was just impossible. We were fortunate in that my brother offered to move in with my Mum so that we could use his one bedroom flat – what we would have done without this I don’t know, but we knew we had to find 7
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