Your Driffield Councillors

East Yorkshire: Multi-Agencies in Flood Meeting

From the Police:

The Police regularly exercise their responses to many major Policing scenarios, football riots, major road traffic incidents, firearm and terrorist attack to name a few but no-one had experienced an event of the magnitude of the floods on the 25^th June and it is difficult to imagine how such an occurrence could have been “practiced”.

Nothing like this has been seen in living memory. It was almost impossible to assess what was happening. The 999 system was very quickly overwhelmed. All “normal policing” had been suspended by about 10:00 hrs on the day. Focus was on saving lives. The volume of calls for assistance was such that the regional capacity and capability to respond “began to fail”. The Police digital communications system was also under extreme pressure and teetered on the edge of collapse. Unimportant calls were ignored.

It took a day to really establish what the real picture of the event was and the seven day experience which started with the flood warnings in the early morning of the 25^th was a first for all.

Major Policing lessons for the future:

• Build a plan for the longer term tackling of these events.
• In an emergency like this, ignore the trivia and concentrate on life saving.
• Beef up communications.

From the Environment Agency:

The severity of the event, almost 4 inches of rain in a 14hr period, never before seen, a month of rain in a day, the wettest in 125 years. The EA provided early warning of flood from rivers, not from sewers, there is no technology in place to do this.

EA aim to give 2hr warning and there is a specific service which people can sign up to which will provide them with this. Uptake of this even in flood prone areas is not good.

The first event took place on the 15^th June when 2.4 inches of rain fell this was followed on the 25^th with the major event. EA stated that the “Silver Command” worked well, offering them the opportunity to co-ordinate activities to ensure that for instance the Fire Service were not pumping flood water from one affected location into another dangerous outlet.

EA core duties are to reduce flood risk to urban areas and manage drainage in normal flow times. It is not sound to use resources to guard an “odd property”, the response has to offer better use of the finances which are available.

The amount of water and thus flooding is further influenced by tide levels in the estuary.

EA comment that the flooding situation in Holderness would have happened even had the watercourses and drains been cleaned out was met with derision from members of various Internal Drainage Boards who were present at the meeting.

Fire Service Comment:

The normal rate of calls to the Brigade for assistance is at the level of about eighty per day, by eight am calls were arriving at an “alarming rate” and by mid morning of the 25^th there was a call queue of more than eight hundred callers. In this situation the emergency calls are automatically re-routed to the next available Brigade call centre, North Yorkshire or South Yorkshire and then further afield at one point on the 25^th there were so many calls arriving that the auto re-routing scatter reached as far as Essex.

The Fire & Rescue Service is well prepared for flood, it is a relatively usual event, but not at this scale, nothing like this has happened before and the Service actually does not have a duty to respond. On the afternoon of the 25^th every single available officer was deployed assisting in the emergency and a “recall to duty” had been actioned to every other able officer. Machines, vehicles and equipment were also requisitioned from any other Fire Service which could reasonably help

Equipment found to be sadly lacking in the face of the task, for instance the Brigade’s VHF communications system was simply unable to cope with the demands and even some new supposedly excellent kit was found to be woefully inadequate for the situation.

There were many offers of help from a host of volunteer rescue services but there was no “register” to refer to, to assess whether the offered helpers would be suitable or not.

Much Brigade resource was tied up pumping water out of “essential infrastructure”, hospital basements, telephone exchanges etc. etc., this must be sorted out these structures must be, permanently, better defended against the risk of flooding so that valuable assets can be better directed to life saving and rescue in emergency situations.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council overview:

The capacity of the system to cope with the 25^th June event was seriously undermined by damage done by the earlier 15^th June experience, ie. Debris carried down the drains by the earlier deluge could not be removed in the timescale available. Much of this debris originates not from the highway or public places but from private properties.

There was a massive response to the emergency from many ERYC service areas, including care services, education services, parks, highways, engineers, buildings etc.etc.

There was a huge amount of damage done by both deluges to the highway infrastructure and the capability of the ERYC to respond during the emergency was seriously hampered by abandoned vehicles.

Again the focus had to be on saving lives and the care of the vulnerable.

Sandbags became the focus of much public attention, but because the highway system was largely out of action delivery of these was at best challenging and actually at some times almost impossible.

Rest Centres were put in place at both Withernsea and Beverley for those who used them these were a great asset.

As the week went by the focus moved to South Holderness where there were massive drainage problems with the system unable to cope with the waters as they progressed downstream.

The clean up operation started in the second week and as time passed by it became obvious that there were far more than the original estimate of 2500 properties affected the final figure looks to be closer to 4500. About 500 of these are council houses.

Many East Riding of Yorkshire Council staff have not been off “standby” or “duty” since the 25^th June. The main task now is to ensure that damaged communities are supported and that we set about a detailed review of the event with a view to learning what we can for the future.

Current best estimates of highway and infrastructure damage (excluding schools) stands at about £14m but as time goes by new damage emerges as springs rise and continue to destroy the road and footway system.

A Yorkshire Water viewpoint:

The 15^th and 16^th of June were big contributory factors to the “unprecedented natural disaster” of the 25^th of June.

All through the events Yorkshire Water’s top priority was to maintain a supply of fresh drinking water and this priority was achieved. Second priority was to uphold the structural integrity of the 120 reservoirs in the system, this was achieved.

Third priority was to maintain the effective working of the waste water system, this faced many challenges. Thirty six of the Yorkshire Water regions waste treatment plants were submerged by floodwaters although the Saltend plant was flooded it remained in operation, many others did not.

The sewers were simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of liquid they were trying to handle. Yorkshire Water have more than 32,000km of sewer much of it old and outdated, they are designed to cater with a once in 30yr severity of occurrence not with the type of downpour which was experienced on 25^th June which is estimated as a once in 125yr event. If the infrastructure was to be re-built to this capacity the cost would be in billions.

Notes taken by Cllr Symon Fraser

July 2007