One thing that the Brits (for some reason) seem to sort of pride themselves on is that their little land is relatively immune from natural disasters. No earthquakes or hurricanes for them! Just smooth mundane weather for them! But to be honest, I'm actually surprised by how much fury nature seems to unleash upon my surroundings.
First of all, there is this bizarre tornado thing. Like, little tornadoes randomly pop up in cities and wreak a small amount of havoc. Having seen the Wizard of Oz a few too many times, my vision of a tornado involves the gathering up of lots of dust and cows as it sweeps over the plains. Not randomly taking off a few roofs in the middle of Birmingham. Like I have no understanding of why there are tornadoes, but I swear there are. And many more than you would think!
Next there are the floods. Last summer huge swathes of the middle of the country were covered in water for a considerable amount of time. It was a big deal, like trains were cancelled, people didn't have any drinking water and people had mud issues. And you were like, oh no this is horrible, they don't get natural disasters in England so this must be really difficult! So here we are, less than six months later, and what is going on? Many of these same rivers are breaking their banks again. The news shows people being rescued because their workplaces have been surrounded by water during the day and other people are getting carried away in their cars. Now I don't really know where these places are as they all have slightly odd yet similar names, but Shropshire is having some issues. I'm starting to think that maybe flooding is a somewhat regular issue for large portions of the country. Having spent a good portion of yesterday reading planning guidelines and panning past page after page of 'acceptable' shaped chimneys and 'unacceptable' shaped chimneys, I couldn't help but think, maybe instead of worrying so much about chimneys and fences, they should be like hmm, maybe let's avoid building everything on a flood plain. I don't know, just a thought.
The third thing that is not so much a natural disaster but makes the news occasionally is that of what I term booty. Ships occasionally get in trouble off the coast, running into rocks and things and sort of start to sink and all their cargo makes its way to shore at random places along the south coast. Like last week I was reading about people getting motorcycles and cat food that had washed ashore. Yesterday the news was giving wide coverage as a 10-mile section of the south coast is being inundated with 2x4s from a ship that's been stuck off the Dorset coast for a week at a really funny angle.
Basically, for this seemingly disaster free land, a lot of random stuff seems to go awry. Personally I'd rather have a tiny little earthquake every few years where a glass falls over or whatever than have my house flood every 6 months.
*** Disclaimer: I realize that most places don't flood, and the places flooding now are not necessarily those that flooded over the summer. I have not been personally affected by flooding or tornadoes or the beaching of booty.
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2 comments:
ooo another entry where i shall comment...yeah i totally agree just there is just so much demand for housing they have to build in flood risk areas. I would disagree with the other comment though for instance if you have a village thats been around for 100's of years what you dont want is a load of new builds that outnumber the original homes that look like the horrible generic new build homes they insist on building...its best to keep the new builds in character. but yeah i totally agree with the flooding - i was told the other day there are two jobs in the UK which will be in demand over the next 10 years 1. is a flood plain experts and 2. is transport planners/engineers - i was like excellent - but you can see why!
The entire US has been mapped to show 100 year and 500 year floodplains and floodways, and there are regulations about developing in those areas, but flooding still occurs over and over again in the same areas because they were developed before the mapping was done. Now the government is realizing it should just buy out those people so they move to higher ground, and let the rivers flood. The government is also restoring wetlands and riparian areas to soak up the floods. But it will take awhile! In the south, in the old days, the plantation homes along the Mississippi, before the levee was built, were designed to let it flood. The ground floor was just used for storage and the families lived on the upper floors above the floods. I thought that was clever.
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