"I blame the Council"

[Hazell B]

There's currently a good deal of flooding in Yorkshire, as I'm sure the national news keeps reporting between politicians moving house and kittens stuck in trees.

Locally the TV news has been one long "... and now some local views ...." with microphones shoved in the faces of anyone evenly mildly moistened.

The bit I don't get are the ones standing in front of their four hundred thousand pound riverside (river-in) houses saying the council didn't give them any warnings or sandbags. How can the local authories be to blame for a flood? :mark:

We've had a Floodline phone number to call for several years now, a host of TV weather warnings for about two weeks solid, men in vans with loud-hailers screaming that the end is nigh and we should beware floods and to be fair they did buy homes on a flood plain ....... what more warning do they want? :s

There are people dead in this flood, yet still you here mutterings about a slightly soggy garden being "disasterous" and "I blame the Council!" from people who can afford their own damned sand, bags and shovel :(

Why do we humans always feel the need to blame somebody else for things like this? :confused:

[Drew]

Have you not seen the adverts on the tv, no win no fee claims direct crap?

Don't we now live in a blame society?

[BDunnell]

There's currently a good deal of flooding in Yorkshire, as I'm sure the national news keeps reporting between politicians moving house and kittens stuck in trees.

Locally the TV news has been one long "... and now some local views ...." with microphones shoved in the faces of anyone evenly mildly moistened.

The bit I don't get are the ones standing in front of their four hundred thousand pound riverside (river-in) houses saying the council didn't give them any warnings or sandbags. How can the local authories be to blame for a flood? :mark:

We've had a Floodline phone number to call for several years now, a host of TV weather warnings for about two weeks solid, men in vans with loud-hailers screaming that the end is nigh and we should beware floods and to be fair they did buy homes on a flood plain ....... what more warning do they want? :s

There are people dead in this flood, yet still you here mutterings about a slightly soggy garden being "disasterous" and "I blame the Council!" from people who can afford their own damned sand, bags and shovel :(

Why do we humans always feel the need to blame somebody else for things like this? :confused:

I suppose it's because local authorities do bear some degree of responsibility for flood defences and emergency planning. However, I agree that blaming them for the damage can go far too far. I think the reason is the feeling many people have — wrongly, in my view — that any public authority is automatically incompetent.

[Brown, Jon Brow]

I live on a floodplain of a river that was notorious for flooding pre-1980ish

It has been raining for 40 day and 40 nights, but now it doesn't flood :D

Answering , your question Hazell, yes we live in a blame society but flooding can be avoided in most cases if adequate flood defenses were built. (But people would probably complain at how much they would cost :mad: )

[RaikkonenRules]

A1 between Newark and Retford is closed due to flooding. Have to use the crappy back roads now :mad:

[Hazell B]

I don't believe flooding can be avoided, certainly not in most of the villages mentioned on TV.

There's miles of rivers here and the land is flat. Water has no choice, it must go somewhere. We've got high earth banks here, so further along (where the 400k houses and posh folk dwell) is where the water must go. The fact that many of these people bought a plot and self-built just makes it less anyone's fault but their own in my eyes.

I know many rivers will start flooding over the next few years and homes always thought of as dry will suffer, but here we have a silt land and houses built under the road levels and way under-drained. The silt on the land came from past floodings, over hundreds of thousands of years, yet soemhow a council formed over the past decade is to blame? No :mark:

And yes, I bet they moan about paying for flood walls too! :D

[Brown, Jon Brow]

I don't believe flooding can be avoided, certainly not in most of the villages mentioned on TV.

There's miles of rivers here and the land is flat. Water has no choice, it must go somewhere. We've got high earth banks here, so further along (where the 400k houses and posh folk dwell) is where the water must go.


It doesn't get much flatter than where I live. Our flood defences include flood gates that open when the river reaches a certain level. The water goes into fields where there aren't any houses. So it technically floods, but in a controlled way.

[BDunnell]

I should imagine that isn't possible everywhere, for various reasons.

[Daniel]

You live on a floodplain, you deal with the consequences.

I've never lived anywhere where there is a flood risk and this is why..... People should look closer to home if they want someone to blame.

[Mark]

The tough part is when you can't get insurance, then you get flooded, some of the bills for these things run into tens of thousands. IMO there should at least be a government backed flood insurance scheme for those who can't get flood insurance commerically.

[Dave B]

There was a woman on the news yesterday moaning that the police evacuated them with "barely any warning". Given the sudden nature of the flooding, I'm not sure what she was expecting :s

[Dave B]

The tough part is when you can't get insurance, then you get flooded, some of the bills for these things run into tens of thousands. IMO there should at least be a government backed flood insurance scheme for those who can't get flood insurance commerically.
Why? The risks of being flooded can be quantified, more or less, and should be taken into consideration when one is buying a house.

If you choose to take a calculated risk, and lose, then why should public money bale you out?

[Daniel]

Why? The risks of being flooded can be quantified, more or less, and should be taken into consideration when one is buying a house.

If you choose to take a calculated risk, and lose, then why should public money bale you out?
Because it's not "my" fault :(

[J4MIE]

If you live on a flood plain without insurance, what do you expect?

I remember when Glasgow got flooded a few years back cos of some freak storm, the people there said that they couldn't afford insurance so wanted public money to fix everything. I was not impressed :mad:

[Hazell B]

On the insurance issue, my house is thirty yards from a tidal river (the Ouse) that brings huge ocean-going cargo ships past at high tides each day. I can get insurance, but it's cost is so high it'd be cheaper to replace the entire house content that would be damaged after only two years of paying. Non-flood insurance is the same as anywhere else, but tack on flood cover and it adds about three thousand pounds. This house has NEVER flooded. In fact it cannot flood thanks to the river being tidal, so why the high cost?

The stables, a half mile off the same river, flood twice a year at least and houses near it also get soaked. They have insurance cheaper than it would cost me thanks to having it for years before floods started there.

No sense to the insurance costs at all :mark:

For the record, we have had warnings of further floods here. Do I see sandbags outside the houses that always flood? No. As I said, it's their own fault when they get wet feet ......

[tintin]

There was a woman on the news yesterday moaning that the police evacuated them.

I'd moan if the police tried to evacuate me!

Evacuating buildings is fine, but people? It's just messy and painful. ;)