Battling the floods

BLUE skies and sunshine could be seen through the windows of the Flood Defence Incident Room when I arrived. Not that anyone in the cramped, hot office had time to gaze out over sun-drenched Clifton Moor. They were too busy assessing graphs on computer screens, taking phone calls, checking maps and making decisions.

While waiting to find out what all this activity meant I read the noticeboard. One of several newspaper cuttings was an Evening Press editorial from the June floods praising the Environment Agency for its prompt warnings and effective flood defences.

A cartoon fixed nearby showed an owl swooping on a mouse, talons outstretched. The mouse is giving the owl two fingers. "When faced with complete disaster," the caption reads, "total defiance is the only recourse."

The Environment Agency staff are not facing complete disaster. But they do act with a certain quiet defiance as they attempt to predict and subdue any floodwaters in North Yorkshire.

The incident room is on the first floor of a typical Clifton Moor office block. Usually it is deserted. It is only activated when Mother Nature throws a wobbly of the sort we suffered earlier this week.

On Tuesday night, rain lashed down with rare ferocity. The Environment Agency's rain level gauges around the region confirmed the intensity of the downpour. Its 200-plus remote monitoring stations, placed across the river network, were soon recording rising water levels.

These results were flashed across to the agency's regional office in Leeds. One of the monitoring officers noted that the river levels were continuing to rise and put the agency on alert.

Next, a forecasting duty officer was brought in to make an assessment. He or she must judge whether the river levels will rise downstream fast enough to make flooding a real possibility.

They contacted the office for the area affected, in this case the Dales Area. Based in York it is responsible for the Tees, Swale, Ure, Nidd, Wharfe, Ouse, Derwent and Esk rivers, and the coast from Hartlepool to Flamborough Head.

Thus the Flood Defence Incident Room in York was activated at about 8pm on Tuesday night. Monitoring of river levels was then stepped up. Daily readings become hourly or half-hourly. Before long, the relentless rain gave the agency an early chance to test its new Flood Warning System.

This was introduced after Ryedale residents complained they were given inadequate notice of the devastating Derwent floods of last year. Out went the colour-coded system, which too many found confusing. In came codes for All Clear, Flood Watch, Flood Warning and Severe Flood Warning.

Flood Watches were first issued from York on Monday afternoon. These do not go out directly to the public, but to the media, local authorities and other relevant agencies. Later Flood Warnings were issued at Pickering Beck, Pickering, on the Ure at Bishop Monkton and on the Swale at Richmond. A Flood Warning means that property may be at risk from the rising waters. Residents who might be affected are contacted directly.

Environment Agency staff were not taken by surprise by this week's problems. Severe weather warnings had alerted them to the possibilities of imminent flooding.

"We had very intense rainfall," says Paul Longland, flood warning duty officer. "Forty millimetres fell in about six hours - a quarter of a month's rainfall in that period. All the rivers have gone up quickly, but there's only one location with flooding of properties and that was at Goathland."

To complicate matters, the agency is not responsible for minor waterways like the Eller Beck that runs through Goathland. They are the responsibility of the local authority or landowner. The Environment Agency plays a supervisory role.

On the bigger rivers, Paul was deciding which flood defence measures to use. He had closed flood gates on the Tees as a precautionary measure. Another option is to open sluices, releasing water and lowering river levels.

A bank of computers aids his decisions. One brings him all the data from the various river basins, graphs showing the rising river levels and rainfall. Another shows information from a weather radar. A third operates the automatic voice messaging system. It can telephone 40 at-risk households at a time to warn them of possible flooding. Thousands of people are informed this way.

The Flood Defence Incident Room is the nerve centre of the operation. But there are a number of people out in the field, assessing the situation and ringing in reports. They also operate flood and sluice gates manually.

All the new technology makes life a little easier, says Paul. To an outsider, however, he seems deluged by information.

Timing is crucial. The agency is expected to issue a Flood Warning at least two hours before the flooding actually happens. A fine line separates a hasty warning, which unnecessarily alarms people, and a late warning which gives them too little time to react - an accusation levelled at the agency after the Derwent floods.

"Inevitably you get criticism," says Paul. "You have always not issued a warning in time or issued one too soon. The public are never satisfied.

"But you get the satisfaction if you feel you issued the warnings at the right time."

Interestingly, only one of the team in the incident room is normally involved in flood warning work. Judy Reed is responsible for compiling reports after major incidents to help the agency refine its emergency procedures.

Alongside her is Cynthia Neale, a water resources officer who issues irrigation licences to farmers. Then there's Ian Cooke, of development control. He assesses planning applications to ensure properties are not built on flood plains.

Paul is a civil engineer designing flood defences. They are among the 140 staff in the York office, working on such diverse subjects as ecology and water quality. Each brings a wide range of expertise to bear on the task of stemming the floods.

As Judy says, this work "is not an exact science. You can prepare for flooding but you can't prevent it."

And things are likely to get worse. At the launch of Flood Week last week, Environment Agency officer Colin Atkinson said that "because of climate change a typical flood that might happen on average once in 100 years, could occur more frequently in the future".

Climate change? I know what he means. As I go to leave the bells of an ice cream van are jangling outside. By the time I'm in my car another torrential downpour has begun. It looks as if York's Flood Defence Incident Room should stand by to be... busy.