AAs autumn fades into winter, the news is once again filled with familiar stories: swollen rivers, flooded streets and overburdened infrastructure. Since Friday, England, Wales and Ireland have been caught in a storm The Spanish Meteorological Agency elegantly named Claudia, with grim results. One place in particular bore the brunt of it all: the Welsh border town of Monmouth, where the raging River Monnow spilled into the streets. rescued from their homes and the drones are captured Aerial view of the accident sceneshowing fragile-looking buildings suddenly surrounded by a huge clay-brown swamp.
Claudia and its aftermath made national headlines, but most local and regional floods now seem too commonplace to attract that kind of attention. Eleven days ago Cambria saw flooded roadsblocked drains and more than 250 flood-related issues were reported to the relevant councils. Railway lines in Cornwall were immersed in water; in Carmarthen, west Wales, there were reports one of the worst floods in living memory. But who has heard of these stories outside the affected areas? Such relatively small events, it seems, can now only be expected.
There have been recent reminders that floods will become even more destructive and dramatic. In mid-October, insurance giant Aviva published a report entitled Building the Communities of the Future 2025which was full of alarming facts: among them, that over the past 10 years, one in 13 new houses was built in areas of greatest risk of flooding; and that by 2050 the number of properties at risk of flooding could increase by 25% to 8 million. It was accompanied by an article in the Guardian. warning that “some towns may have to be abandoned” and that prospect may already be starting to revive: in the Worcestershire town of Tenbury Wells, which has been hit by floods four times in the last six years, the council is already adjusting to the fact that local public buildings are now it's simply impossible to insure.
Last week I had lengthy conversations with two scientists who specialize in floods and the enormous problems they pose. They cited years of underinvestment in flood defenses and the £10.5 billion the government had recently committed. postpone for improvements between now and 2036, but also spoke about the lack of attention given to natural protection provided by expanded wetlands, new forestry and the simple need to make urban environments as green as possible. They also said that the Starmer government house building drive – how and when this happens – could mean both the number of homes built in areas at high risk of flooding and whether new buildings will have decent drainage and use permeable materials instead of concrete and asphalt, which cause flooding. even greater danger.
Professor Jess Neumann She works at the University of Reading, where she specializes in “flood research leading to policy change.” The fundamental problem today, she told me, is that builders, local councils and water companies are taking these things “to a level that is appropriate for today, not for 2070 or 2080 when we will see much more extreme weather conditions.”
She then talked about the problems associated with the insurance business and showed me figures on the percentage of commercial properties in high-risk flood areas that have no insurance, often because premiums are too high or insurers refuse to cover more than physical damage, leaving lost trade untouched. The numbers are staggering: at last count, 58% of retail spaces in such locations are uninsured in 2022, and the same goes for 50% of offices. As the flooding worsens, fears are growing that many local economies will simply be devastated, with “businesses leaving and places potentially destitute.”
Homeowners at risk of flooding are now benefiting from the Flood Re scheme, which pools risks to make essential cover more affordable. But this will end in 2039 – at which point, to quote the official advertisement, “the insurance market will return to pricing that fully reflects the risks of flood insurance.” This crystallizes the prospect of places simply becoming uninhabitable, and it may enter the public consciousness much sooner. “Nobody is putting a marker on a map and saying, 'We think these are places that are going to become uninhabitable because people won't be able to get insurance, people won't be able to sell their homes and businesses will move away,'” Neumann said. “But I think in the next five or 10 years it will become clear where these places are.”
At the Brunel University Center for Flood Risk and Resilience, Dr. Carola Koenig sounded even more harsh. “At some point, some difficult decisions will have to be made—that certain communities will have to be relocated,” she told me. “Defense becomes so expensive that it’s not worth it, so you have to move communities to safer, higher ground.”
However, we run into several huge problems here. Can anyone imagine such huge changes occurring in a political system as full of cynicism and climate denial as ours? What about the level of government spending this would entail? Right now, thinking about this aspect of the future undoubtedly raises another question regarding flood protection, protection and resilience: why is there such a huge political silence about these probabilities and how can we all begin to prepare for them?
Eighteen years ago I remember well the three days I spent riding along the river Severnin the midst of the terrible floods of 2007. I spoke to people in the town of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire who spoke of schools of goldfish swimming in their street and the death of a father and son who were killed by fumes from petrol equipment as they tried to pump out water at the local rugby club. In Gloucester, I vividly remember a day spent on a newly built residential avenue called Cypress Gardens, where a local builder told me that he had conveyed panicked warnings to the council about its vulnerability to flooding, only to see construction go ahead despite everything, and then be filled with a meter of water when the creek that fed the nearby Severn overflowed its banks.
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These people were stoic, but usually filled with a sense of urgency. The problem is all of us, and the way politics and power work to fill us with a completely false sense of security that belies one particular part of the climate emergency: the fact that while people living near rivers and coastlines are especially vulnerable to flooding, the flash floods that are now commonplace can happen absolutely anywhere.
In countries threatened by earthquakes, Neumann reminded me, the public tends to be informed of the threats and prepared to act. “But we don’t do that here,” she said. “Our biggest natural hazard is flooding, and we are not preparing people for it.” In saying this, she suddenly emphasized the madness of this everyday fact and the grave dangers into which we still seem to sleepwalk.
