"Floods recovery 'to take years' "

[catgate]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/8374308.stm

Structural engineers are assessing properties for damage

There is little wonder it will take years if this is an example of how the structural engineers do their examinations.

Edit:-

May be this is being done using the same principle as that used in assessing and repairing the economy. Perhaps the door handle is being eased quantitively.

[Gandalph]

Our local Borders TV News is covering very little else at the moment.

At the last count there are 16 Bridges out, all roads leading to the bridges are obviously closed and people are having to make long detours,all schools are closed. Some of the local shop keepers and residents have been allowed back into their properties to start clearing out. The Insurance Companies have said the damage costs will run into the tens of million of pounds. Some of the residents are still in local accommodation and are relying on hand outs etc,.

Not a very cheery prospect for a good Christmas. It has been said that there is a chance of a lot more heavy rain to come yet. :(

[catgate]

When I heard about this event and the comment made by one of our cardboard-cut-out leaders, about it being a "once in a thousand years event", I was immediately taken back to 1952. It was then that Lynmouth's flooding was described in a similar way. That was without the help of global warming and Winston Churchill was in power.

As with all government statistics there seems to me to be something wrong.

[-pops-]

- - - and what about the East Coast a year later (1953)?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/unde...953_flood.shtml

[catgate]

- - - and what about the East Coast a year later (1953)?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/unde...953_flood.shtml

I'd forgotten about that, and I should not have done. My uncle had retired there only a couple of years earlier.

[Belatucadrus]

There's a letter in the Telegraph today warning the victims not to pay much attention to the hand wringing and vacuous promises from the visiting politicos. Apparently the bridge in the authors town was lost in a similar flood in 1968, despite all the promises, the temporary steel structure put up at the time is still the only river crossing. I also seem to remember the mayor of Boscastle saying the same to the people of Sheffield a year or so ago.