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Europe counts cost of flood chaos
Staff, BBC
Cities and towns across central Europe remain on alert as they deal with the impact of devastating floods which have killed at least 42 people.
Evacuations from Alpine towns in Switzerland have been continuing, with hundreds taken to safety in Brienz. The Swiss capital Bern has also been hard hit by the flood water – with fears of further problems later. ..
Romania is one of the countries worst affected. Seven elderly people were killed there on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 31. Around 2,000 people have been taken to safety from their homes, but flood waters are expected to start receding.
(26 Aug 2007)
Flood insurers get tough with UK Government
Staff, Yorkshires Dales News
LEADERS of the British insurance industry, dismayed at the lack of preparation against this summer’s disastrous floods, are warning the Government to spend more on flood defences – or they will consider withdrawing insurance cover for home owners and businesses in threatened areas.
Unlike most European country’s, says the Association of British Insurers (ABI), most flood damage is paid for mainly by private companies. In continental Europe, governments pick up the largest slice of the bill.
But in a sinister warning, the ABI says it might reconsider this arrangement unless the Environment Agency spends much more on flood defences and might, in future, refuse to cover developments built on flood plains.
These stark threats are also thought to reflect the fury of the insurance industry at the Government’s penny pinching towards compensation for this year’s floods, which are estimated to cost at least £3 billion and perhaps much more when the final bills come in. So far, the Government has offered a measly £15 million. ..
This news will make grim reading for hundreds of Yorkshire home-owners who have been devastated by flood water in the past three months, ranging from Filey to Sheffield. Many Yorkshire Dales rivers regularly flood and to have insurance cover refused would be a nightmare for home owners at risk.
(21 Aug 2007)
Second Thames flood barrier planned
Melissa Kite, Sunday Telegraph
A new £20 billion Thames barrier to save London from a potentially disastrous flooding threat is the centrepiece of a series of measures planned by the Government.
Phil Woolas, the minister for climate change, told The Sunday Telegraph that a feasibility study into a second Thames barrier, potentially required within 25 years, was due to report in a matter of weeks.
In addition, new flood defences are being planned for all major police, fire and power stations and other vital infrastructure in a bid to avoid more disastrous flooding of the kind that hit Britain last month.
Mr Woolas said that during the floods, which caused up to £3 billion worth of damage, parts of Gloucestershire came within minutes of the biggest peacetime evacuation Britain has seen. It came after a crucial electricity sub-station was nearly destroyed. ..
(26 Aug 2007)
See also Blame the soggy summer on La Nina.
Aftermath of Midwest Deluge: Economic Impact
Staff, ABC
Across northern Illinois, rising rivers have thousands on edge, bracing themselves for the economic obstacles that will inevitably follow the storm.
Triple the average August rainfall has swelled the Fox River in Wisconsin to 50-year record elevation levels. The water has seeped into dozens of homes, despite sandbag deliveries by the tractor-full.
“We can sandbag,” said Chris Lienhardt of the Antioch, Ill., Fire Department. “We can put plastic in it. Some of these people have gone out and gotten industrial pumps, but the water’s going to go where it’s going to go.” Tens of thousands of Midwesterners are still without power — two days after crippling winds battered Chicago and surrounding suburbs. ..
(25 Aug 2007)
Nature trumps decades of effort
Jason Stein, Wisconsin State Journal
When last weekend ‘s storms dropped as much as a foot of rain on southwest Wisconsin, the muddied waters of the Kickapoo River rose by 10 feet in just a day, swelling to a record nearly five feet above flood level.
While the historic rains lasted, they short-circuited a half-century of progress in reducing floods in the region, straining earthen dams, overtopping levees and wreaking tens of millions of dollars in damages. “That exceeded any previous flood ” on the Kickapoo in the 75 years of available records, Herb Garn, assistant director of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Middleton, said of the storms.
Experts said that, in spite of major gains made since the 1950s in improving farming practices and controlling floods in the steep valleys of the Driftless Area, the storms show how difficult it can be to control such historic rains. With nature at its absolute worst, one of the few ways to save homes and businesses is to make sure they ‘re built out of the path of floods in the first place, they said, adding that affected communities such as Gays Mills should consider that fact as they rebuild. ..
Gays Mills village board president Larry McCarn said residents had been talking about the possibility of moving the village, but the narrow river valley in which it sits leaves little room to move the community to safer ground. “It doesn ‘t really seem feasible because there ‘s nowhere to go, ” McCarn said of a move. “I don ‘t know where you ‘d have a main street. ” ..
On one point, local officials like Flesch and experts like Potter and Knox all agreed. A dam on the Kickapoo River proposed by federal authorities at La Farge in the 1970s — never built for environmental reasons — wouldn ‘t have done much good to prevent last weekend ‘s flooding. Potter said the worst flooding on the Kickapoo was downstream from the proposed dam. “A dam up there probably wouldn ‘t have made any difference, ” he said.
(26 Aug 2007)
Flash flooding in SE Qld breaks records
Staff, Brisbane Times
Dozens of people have been rescued from homes and cars, and more are poised to evacuate their homes as flash-flooding caused by a one-in-100-year deluge sweeps across south-east Queensland.
More than 300mm of rain and high winds have lashed the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay regions since Thursday. The cause is an unusual low pressure system over the state’s south-east. ..
Most damage has been caused by fallen trees which had been weakened by the prolonged drought and flooding in the still-rising Mary Valley catchment – where the controversial Traveston Crossing Dam is planned. ..
(24 Aug 2007)
