Erstellt am: 8. 2. 2014 - 15:14 Uhr
"The shape of Britain will change"
I don't usually blog in English here, but this is a national emergency. No, seriously, it is.
As you might have read elsewhere, coastal areas and large inland parts of England, Wales and Cornwall have been affected by floods after weeks and weeks of incessant torrential rain and heavy gales.
Coastlines have been battered by enormous waves, a major train line has been washed away, and thousands of homes are underwater.
As I happen to live on a hill myself, my personal experience of the floods has been limited to looking out of the car window and spotting the odd lake where there used to be a field, so instead of regurgitating what I read in the papers, hear and see on the news and the net, I have sent a list of questions to the journalist Joe Lepper. He lives in the vicinity of Glastonbury in the county of Somerset, where this winter's floods have taken on truly catastrophic proportions. His well-informed replies reveal the local and global political implications of a disaster that is hardly just natural.
Environment Agency
How close to the flooded part of Somerset do you live?
I live in Street, just on the edge of the Somerset levels near to Glastonbury, surrounded by the flooded fields of the levels. We are a few miles from the evacuated flood zone but the fields just a few hundred metres away are already full. This morning the River Brue had burst its banks again.
What precautions have you had to take, and in how far have you been inconvenienced yourself?
There is no history of flooding in my village, but they said that about some of the others villages that have been flooded, so as yet we are not quite at the sandbag stage. Some of the houses on the edge of the village near to the River Brue, which runs between Street and Glastonbury, have got sandbags outside their house though. The main inconvenience is travel. The main flooded areas are between us and the county town of Taunton. There is standing water and flooding on many of the roads around us as well. The fields where we usually walk the dog or take the kids for walks are saturated and difficult to walk on as well.
Joe Lepper
What about power failures and food provision? Looking at aerial footage of the floods, you wonder how people manage to keep going.
We are okay here. The main motorways down to Exeter and connecting Somerset with Bristol and London are fine. The problems to do with power and food are localised to the specific area of the Levels.
The London-based national media have only really covered this as a major issue in recent days, but it really has been going on for much longer, hasn't it?
Villages have been isolated and the fields around my village have been flooded since December. It’s been a huge local story here since then with tales of villagers being rescued, roads closed and damage to properties.
The national media have largely ignored it because the UK media is still very much driven by the London agenda. Most national journalists live in the areas around London. When there is snow there, then snow chaos becomes a story. Now the flooding has reached areas of Sussex, Kent and outer London it has become a story for them.
The other key change was Prince Charles’s visit. It was a very calculated PR exercise. I’m not the greatest fan of a monarchy, but I admire Prince Charles’s intervention here. When he was here he was overheard by journalists saying that inaction in this area was a “tragedy”. This provided national journalists with a great angle. Next day David Cameron had taken over the chairmanship of the Cobra committee and by the end of the week he’d visited the area for the first time. Funny that.
Prior to this, national coverage was largely a joke. The Sun for example sent a Page 3 girl in to cheer up flooded residents in early January. As you can imagine that went down like a tonne of sewage among residents:
The Daily Mail readership were their usual charming selves as well:
www.centralsomersetgazette.co.uk
January and December cuttings:
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
www.westerngazette.co.uk
Joe Lepper
Both the Environment Agency and the government have been accused of inaction, and we seem to be at the start of a blame game between the two, with the former headed by a Labour peer and a Conservative Environment Secretary on the government's side. What is your view on this?
There has been inaction on both sides. The root cause appears to be lack of money and a worrying culture of localism at the expense of the government accepting its corporate parent responsibility for citizens. There appears to be an assumption that a Big Society of local people and the local authority will step in. Local people have helped but there is only so much that can be done. The county council like so many around the country has been hammered by austerity cuts and they have no spare money when a crisis happens. The blame lies firmly on the government in my opinion.
This article here contains some very valid questions about Environment Agency inactivity, based on lack of money:
www.theguardian.com
They sat on £400,000 while trying to get more money for dredging while nothing happened. That money could have been spent on boats for villages stranded, food, temporary housing. I can see why villagers are angry.
It is said that people in Somerset have seen this coming. Could you explain to people in Austria why the area is so susceptible to flooding?
The area from the Bristol channel right up to the fields a few hundred metres from my house is below sea level. There was flooding last year and low scale flooding occurs every now and again, but not to this scale in recent years. Historically, it has also been underwater. Glastonbury is known as the Isle of Avalon as it was literally an island surrounded by water many centuries ago. The reed beds near Shapwick are what remains of a vast wetland area, where ancient Britons lived on stilted housing.
Joe Lepper
People have been talking a lot about river dredging as a solution to the flooding crisis, while others say it would only exacerbate the situation by speeding up the rivers and causing floods further downstream. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this, what's yours?
I’m not an environmental expert. However, it makes sense to get the water off the land as quick as possible and to the sea. It is hotly contested here though.
In the course of the economic crisis, amidst the clamour for growth at all cost, climate change denial seems to have got the upper hand in the public debate. Do you think the floods are going to change people's views?
This area, due to its history of flooding and being a very rural area with stunning countryside, tends to have a strong environmental ethos anyway. Here this flooding will heighten that view. There are two LibDem MPs covering south Somerset and Wells, the two affected constituencies, which shows that (despite their role in the coalition government) this part of the south west is more inclined to support more liberal causes. I hope it changes others' views nationwide, but sadly the views of those who deny climate change are so entrenched I’d be surprised if anything can change their mind – that is until their own homes are flooded, perhaps.
As I'm writing this, there are 199 flood warnings in place across the country. Can you see a point in the future when parts of the British Isles might become uninhabitable?
See my earlier answer about the history of this area. With coastal erosion and rising water levels it is inevitable the shape of Britain will change. When I was a local journalist in Sussex during just a few years the coastline around Eastbourne and Seaford changed due to cliff erosion.
There are also longer term changes, such as experienced when this area was underwater.
There needs to be a proper debate about how climate change is changing Britain, but crucially a debate about how we protect ourselves. Do we need major coastal protection? Does the Bristol Channel need some kind of Thames Barrier style scheme in place?
Many thanks to Joe.
I got to know him through his excellent music blog Neon Filler. Heartily Recommended.