More Severe Flooding Expected in England

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6256288.stm

 

 

Last Updated: Saturday, 30 June 2007, 02:13 GMT 03:13 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Flood-hit areas on weather alert

The streets of Bentley, near Doncaster, remain flooded Flood-hit communities are being warned to brace themselves for more torrential rain over the weekend. The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for most areas of England and Wales, with up to 50mm (2in) of rain forecast in some places. A national flood support centre has been set up in Worcester to respond to further outbreaks of severe weather. Widespread flooding in England earlier this week killed four people and forced thousands from their homes. Extra resources Simon Hughes, flood defence manager for the Environment Agency, told BBC Radio Five Live that more flooding was expected. "With the land being just so saturated, more rain's going to mean more flooding," he said. "We're really urging people to be prepared - find out if they're in a place that may flood, and take some simple steps now to prepare themselves if it does flood." Catcliffe, South Yorkshire, was one of the worst affected areas However the agency said floods were not expected "to reach the severity seen earlier in the week". Worcester's newly-created national flood support centre will be gathering information from emergency services across the country to co-ordinate responses to reports of flooding. Details will be fed to a central office in Manchester, which will organise the deployment of extra resources. It will be run by the chief fire officer of the Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service, Paul Hayden, who has been a strong critic of the response to this week's floods. "Because we haven't got standardisation of our equipment and our training, it does mean we aren't as effective as we otherwise could be," he told the BBC. Rainfall of 15-25mm (0.6-1in) is predicted across many parts of England and Wales but there could be up to 50mm in some places. The Met Office said the worst of the heavy rain would be seen in western England and Wales during Saturday. Because the ground is already saturated, "there is potential for further disruption", its website warns. Insurance costs This week's floods were most severe in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands. At the height of the flooding, two people died in Sheffield, including a teenage boy, a man died in Hull and a driver died in Worcestershire. On Friday, five severe flood warnings remained in place in north-east England, with four on the River Don in South Yorkshire. More than 350 people were evacuated from their homes in north Doncaster after the river burst its banks. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said so far 27,000 homes and 5,000 businesses had been affected across the country and that clean-up costs could reach £1bn. The organisation's director general, Stephen Haddrill, said insurers were drafting in extra staff, but there would be some delays in handling claims because of the scale of the flooding. Cash call Meanwhile, the Environment Agency is calling on the government to find more cash to encourage farmers to manage their land in a way that would prevent flooding. The agency's head, Baroness Young, says money should be diverted from the basic farm subsidy and given to those farmers who are prepared to give up the intensive techniques experts say make flooding more likely. She says farmers should be paid to plant more trees, allow land beside rivers to flood when necessary and to turn ploughed fields into meadows. But correspondent Miriam O'Reilly, of BBC Radio 4's Farming Today, said experts had acknowledged that the recent rainfall had been so heavy that no amount of money could have prevented rivers from bursting their banks.

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