Rain, rain and more rain - and serious lessons to learn for the Authorities!

Fazeley and Elford in my County patch ended up feet deep (literally) in flood water during the early hours of Saturday morning (yesterday) but the response from the Authorities was poor, at least in the early stages of the crisis.

Got a call from Lichfield District Council at just before 8.45am on the Saturday morning telling me there were some flood problems. As it turned out that was ’splendid’ understatement!

I decided to have a look how things were going and make sure people knew I was around if needed so I grabbed a pair of waders, spade, bucket and set off.

Fazeley was a mess when I arrived at about 9.15am. I was shocked at what I saw and the more I walked around the more shocking it was. Certainly needed the waders! The main road flooding was the first thing I saw but much worse than that, ground floor flats, houses by the centre and two roads by the Bourne Brook were literally knee deep all over and waist deep in parts.

And that’s when I started to become concerned. Residents and local councillors were telling me that very little appeared to be happening. Ok, the roads were closed off with probably half a dozen police around and I guess there were also a dozen fire officers. I’d also already seen a couple of guys from Lichfield District Council at the community centre which was open for displaced locals to get warm, dry, fed and watered. That was all fine but the water, I was told, had started flooding seriously about 5 hours before.

People were desperate for sand bags and the fact that all they could do was watch as water flooded into more and more houses was causing real, and understandable, tension and distress which was beginning to show in a number of ways. The word was also that fire officers wanted to start pumping water out but had been told by ‘bosses’ they couldn’t. That fact was causing real frustration with residents! I tried to find out who was in charge at the scene but the police couldn’t tell me and the fire officers I asked told me they didn’t know where their boss was.

Eventually I managed to find him but was told he wasn’t able to give me a briefing. Fair enough as he was obviously running around talking into his radio…. although it wasn’t totally clear to me what was being achieved. I did keep him long enough to ask why there were no sandbags and was told there weren’t any available but they were trying to find some. To my suggestion that the army at Whittington may be a place to try I was told politely(ish) that the army would be told if they were needed. By this time residents had started phoning round builders’ merchants to try and get sand delivered and over the next twenty minutes I phoned numerous contacts at Highways, Environment Agency, County…. but to no avail. No luck until my last call where I was assured that 2000 sand bags should shortly be on their way from the Highways Agency only to be told a few minutes later that now they weren’t available after all.

The senior fire officer wasn’t around, there was no ranking police officer and nobody knew who was now in charge on the ground! I’d been there an hour by this time and, in the main, little was improving and nothing was being done for the people and property in the Brook End area.

So I decided to use my contacts to get the army involved and also try and establish if more could be done via the off site command centre. The Commanding Officer of ATR (Lichfield) was on his way down South when I got him on his mobile. After establishing that no formal request for help had been received from the Authorities so far his instant reaction to me was “Matthew, whatever I’ve got available you can have, no problem”. Within 40 minutes a Captain was on site discussing what was needed and what was available with a promise of two 4 tonne high clearance trucks and 40 soldiers.

Also had a call back from Highways to say they’d now got a few hundred sandbags but no way of transporting them. At least things were possibly now coming together (a bit at least). Even the lorry from the builders’ merchants had now turned up from Tamworth with 4 tonnes of loose sand and 250 bags to fill. And within another ten minutes the first truck with twenty five soldiers turned up with some finished sandbags. The guys were great, offloading the completed bags and then cracking on with filling the builders’ merchants bags from the 4 tonnes of loose sand. Fifty minutes later almost all the homes in the Brook End area had at last got sand bags against the front and back doors.

The difference in the mood of local people was palpable once things started to happen. It went from very tense to a spirit of cooperation and ‘get the job done’. Next major step forward was a new Chief Fire Officer appearing at the scene to take formal control. He, too, was a breath of fresh air and got hold of the situation quickly and efficiently. Upgrades had also been made to the off site command centre too.

But this was 8 hours after the flooding started in Fazeley! At least progress was being made, although to add to the tension again, the Heavens had now opened big time! It didn’t last too long thank goodness.

I’d heard that Elford was now completely cut off with floodwater rising. Again the Army, under the command of a newly arrived Major, came into their own and were dispatched by the new fire commander to get through the floodwaters to the village. I was hopeful of getting up there myself at some stage to see how locals were coping. By all accounts, although the situation was bad, the work on the ground up there had been excellent.

I stayed in Fazeley until 4.30ish and attended the regular ‘Silver’ command meetings so that I had a clearer idea of how things were going. What I saw until I left was very dedicated people struggling to get the answers they desperately needed from others and trying to cope with incorrect information and lengthy silences where no information came through. More about the questions and explanations I will be seeking as to why this happened and how it did later in this post.

I set off for Elford and found the information that the village was pretty well cut off was entirely accurate. What I saw on the way was staggering…. it was like an ocean in every direction around Hopwas on the way to Elford and I got there finally despite water being so deep in places it washed over the bonnet of the 4×4.

I got there at about 5pm and after negotiating my way through the various police/fire service cordons was in for another shock at what I saw. The picture at the top of this post shows The Beck, one of the main residential roads in Elford, with floodwater well over a metre deep in places whilst on the left the river is as far as the eye can see.

Despite the appalling conditions and some difficult evacuations of elderly people the rescue teams and villagers were all pretty cheerful and taking the situation in their stride. I talked to a lot of locals and on the whole they were very positive about efforts by the Authorities although were highly critical of the fact that, despite the flood situation being seen as inevitable for many years, little had been done in the way of mitigation.

I left Elford at about 6.30pm just in time to see the latest efforts of the trainee recruits from ATR (Lichfield). They really were worth their weight in gold!!

I mentioned earlier that the Emergency Planning Authorities need to learn some serious lessons. In Fazeley it took far too long for things to kick in properly and I’ve got no idea why there can’t be ready stores of sandbags in any area that has a likelihood of flooding.

I’ve got a list of fifteen key questions I need answers to. With global warming likely to mean more flooding in the future it is essential that flood defences are improved and in the event of defences failing responses by the Authorities have to be much better than they were in Fazeley. When I have those answers to my questions I’ll post again accordingly. In the meantime, good luck to everyone who has suffered damage and inconvenience because of flooding and let’s hope the weather is dry at least until water levels have receded.

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