Preparedness for when

mardatha wrote: »

How do local authorities get away with building on flood plains in the first place?

I suspect because they are told to by central government. My local authority has to build 2000 homes a year. So developers only want to build on green field sites as it is cheaper as no clear up needed. So playing fields and farm land is being earmarked for development. There are some 960 flats being built within the city but all have been sold to Chinese, so will be empty all the time, as it will be their escape route if there is trouble in China. So not only the wrong sorts of homes are being built they are not even helping the local dire housing situation.

jk0 wrote: »

This is my phone:



Only problem is that I have never been able to download photos from it. Maybe someone more tech savvy would manage that.

Intresting topic phones, but bear in mind like when 7/7 took place most cell systems went down/switched over to emergency use only, for me i have a couple of old Nokia 2G phone, as well as a phone called RugGear RG100, this phone is awesome bit like the JCB but better IMO speaker is so load it's untrue, i can ride my motorbike at 40mph with helmet on and still hold a conversation while on hands free and can hear it fine, plus it has dual sims, and i also have a LG G3 phone, also keep sim from 5 providers even though some piggy back onto others you can never be too sure.
I also keep all my electric stuff in a small waterproof bag, given water is my main worry.

All1

Alsothere is another waterprof phone made by JCB called a "Talk-Pro" so as well as being a tough phone it has 446Mhz radio in it, ok it's not the best freq to have and it's not secure but handy way to keep in touch locally if cell towers are down.

keep prepping folks

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11926752/Britain-faces-longest-winter-in-50-years-after-earliest-ever-arrival-of-Siberian-swan.html

thriftwizard wrote: »

True round here also, though it's not the Chinese that are the problem, but those pesky "executives" who apparently will be needing 80% of the new housing planned. So - hundreds - quite literally - of new "town" house with pocket-hanky gardens (if any), or 4-bed dets (of which 2 are large enough to sleep in) with half the ground floor given over to a 2-very-small-cars-parked-lengthways garage. In the meantime, our kids can't even afford to rent anywhere in town, never mind buy. No more school places or doctors & dentists planned, just "desirable" - i.e. expensive - housing.

But at least most of it isn't on flood plains, though some of it is undeniably boggy...

Thanks, Karmacat, I think she's on the mend now, and I'm back home, for now at least. 4 trips there & back again in the van; it's interesting how much safer I feel I driving a biggish, high-ish & more powerful, if slower, vehicle down our rural roads in the dark!

Some on 124 allotment plots, 1 of them being mine. :mad:

Evening all.

sb44, I have that book on the shelf but haven't yet got around to reading it.

The trouble with the UK is that most of the most sensible places to be build on have been built on long ago. Which leaves some buildable bits preserved for sensible reasons, such as being great farmland or areas of outstanding beauty, and other preserved for un-sensible reasons. Such as Nimbyism.

What does that leave? Brownfield sites and the boggier bits of the country where no sane person of centuries past would have dreamed of putting a building. And that's where a lot of the new stuff is building.

My hometown has been in existance for about 1400 years. And there are a bits of ground near the rivers close to the centre which have never been anything more than pasture prone to flooding from the two rivers. Only now they have sprouted 'executive homes' a phrase and a practise I truly abhor.

I wouldn't give you a bent ha'penny for anything built down there, unless to briefly hold it and sell it on to a greater fool. I've seen that neighbourhood awash in 2 ft + water many a time.

My whole neighbourhood and beyond is described by the Environment Agency as at moderate risk of flooding but, if it did flood, it would be classified as severe. There is a river 50m away with many feet of freeboard between the normal level and the top of the banks. If the banks top over, it'll be across the carpark and into my flat.

My plan for that situation is evacuation. The sewers would back up through the plumbing and I'd have feces inside the flat. I'd go to SuperGran in the immediate term, as she's on a higher floor and I have the key to her flat. In the longer term, I would have to be out of my home for some time. Could be looking at a majority loss of my possessions, in that case.:(