The North-east of England and parts of Scotland suffered localised flooding over the weekend thanks to torrential rain.
Emergency services received hundreds of calls, with parts of County Durham and Northumberland worst-hit. Northumberland County Council and the fire service responded to dozens of requests for sandbags to the local community.
Flood alerts were still in place for the rivers Pont and Blyth. Several roads were shut for a time on Saturday and two properties struck by lightning, but there were no reports of injuries.
Several millimetres of rain fell in just a few hours, with Durham and Darlington Fire Service describing conditions as “severe”. A spokesman for Northumberland County Council said: “Heavy rainfall throughout the day caused areas of surface water flooding.
Fluvial Innovations comment:
Sandbagging still seems to be the last port of call for flood protection. However there is extremely strong evidence that demonstrates that using sandbags to assembly flood protection barriers to protect property is completely ineffective.
Problems with sandbags:
- Time consuming and labour intensive to assemble into flood defence barriers
- Prone to leakage
- Can only be used once, not reusable
- Viral and bacterial infections often present in flood water get transposed onto the porous hessian sacks.
The Pitt Review:
In the summer of 2007, Britain suffered devastating floods that cost the economy an estimated £3 billion. After the floods, Sir Michael Pitt was asked by British Ministers to conduct an independent review of the flooding that took place. The floods caused 13 deaths, affected nearly 50,000 homes and 7,000 businesses in England and involved more than 80 local authorities. His report set out glaring gaps in the UK’s readiness to cope with widespread and prolonged flooding and he made 92 subsequent recommendations to make sure communities are better protected.
Two of these recommendations made a direct reference to the use of sandbags as a flood defence measure. ES.49 – “…The Review was unable to obtain any significant evidence that sandbags were particularly effective during the 2007 summer floods in providing protection to individual households.” ES.50 – “…The general provision of sandbags should be phased out in favour of better products such as kite-marked flood boards, air bricks and other forms of temporary defence”
“The FLOODSTOP Modular Flood Barrier is cheaper and far more effective than sandbags. The barrier can be rapidly deployed by one person. It doesn’t need to be bolted to the ground and the units, are simply connected using slide-in keys. The barrier is re-useable, unlike sandbags; and it works, unlike sandbags. Local authorities are wasting a large percentage of their budgets on sandbags that are prone to excessive leakage, slow to assemble and can only be used once.”