Britain grapples through worst torrential rainfall in 248 years
Feb 7, 2014 | The Extinction Protocol
LONDON - Britain
announced emergency funding Thursday to cope with devastating floods
after what officials said had been likely the worst spell of winter
rainfall in at least 248 years. Prime Minister David Cameron’s
government has faced criticism for its handling of a crisis that has
left swathes of the country under water, with a key railway line washed
away. Several people had to be rescued from deluged homes on Thursday
while more storms are expected this weekend. Across the English Channel,
France’s western tip was placed on alert for flooding as high tides
wreaked havoc along Europe’s Atlantic coast. Pickles said the winter was
the “wettest since George III was on the throne,” referring to
Britain’s monarch from 1760-1820. He added that flood victims have
“literally been through hell and high water.” Britain’s Meterological
Office released figures confirming Pickles’ assessment. For southern
England, “regional statistics suggest that this is one of, if not the
most, exceptional periods of winter rainfall in at least 248 years,” it
said in a statement.
Parts of the region received five months of
rainfall between December 12 and January 31. The rainy winter has set
records tumbling, being the wettest combined period of December and
January across the United Kingdom since 1910, the Met Office said. It
was also the windiest December since 1969, based on the occurrence of
winds over 69 mph. For England alone it was the wettest December to
January since 1876-1877 and the second wettest since rainfall records
began in 1766.
Firefighters in Somerset and the
neighboring county of Devon rescued 14 people from homes and stranded
vehicles late Wednesday and early Thursday. Rescuers in inflatable boats
rescued four adults and three children from one house after a river
burst its banks in Stoke St Gregory, a village that heir to the throne
Prince Charles visited on Tuesday, a fire brigade spokesman said. Prince
Charles himself said on his trip to the region that the ‘tragedy is
that nothing happened for so long.” Cameron personally took charge of
the government’s response on Wednesday after facing a growing tide of
criticism for being too slow to aid stricken communities. But the damage
has kept coming, with the main train service connecting Devon and the
county of Cornwall with the rest of Britain being suspended after part
of the sea wall under the coastal railway line collapsed. Meanwhile in
France, Finestere, a department of Brittany which juts out into the
Atlantic, was placed on red flooding alert and braced for two of its
rivers, the Morlaix and the Laita, to burst their banks as a result of
heavy rain forecast for Thursday. The highest-level warning was issued
by Meteo-France shortly after the agency placed 29 departments from
Brittany to the Paris region on a second-tier orange alert. Recent days
have seen huge waves; gale-force winds and torrential rains combine to
batter sea defenses from the Basque country on France’s border with
Spain. The storms sent a Spanish cargo ship crashing into a sea wall at
the French port of Bayonne on Wednesday, splitting it clean in two. –Space Daily
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