Building in flooded areas

Jon_B_2

kathrynha wrote: »

I'm in NW Leeds, currently feeling rather relieved that I thought to buy a house on a hill. The current flooding is worse than I have ever seen it in the 38 years I have lived round here.
Over recent years Leeds and Bradford councils have allowed thousands of homes to be built in the area, and it has reduced the amount of water the land can absorb, and speeded up run-off, and I feel this has added to the flooding at the moment.
Scarily both Leeds and Bradford councils plan to allow thousands more houses to be built in the area. Many of these planned building sites are currently underwater, but it's a nice area where developers will get a good profit for the 4 and 5 bedroom luxury executive homes they are planning to build, so I can't see the councils rethinking the housing sites.
And the housing plans I have seen are all traditional houses with ground floor living.

Thing is though - any sensible person taking out an environmental survey when buying will now know the flood risk based on historical events. Not such an easy sale for the developer now...

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

I've stayed in a neighbouring house to this. Built for hurricanes AND coastal surges:

https://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p975200

You do get moved out to higher land if there is a hurricane though. Lock up and leave.

Increasingly people in Britain are going to have to learn how to deal with environmental risk like people in other countries do (and Britons have in the past).

People in various parts of Aus learn to live with terrible bushfires, extended multi-year periods of drought, massive floods. It's the same for people living in large parts of the States (some of whom also live with earthquakes).

It's perfectly possible to live in an unpredictable environment and thrive in it with the use of a bit of savvy. The aboriginals managed it for 10,000s of years.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

Increasingly people in Britain are going to have to learn how to deal with environmental risk like people in other countries do (and Britons have in the past).

People in various parts of Aus learn to live with terrible bushfires, extended multi-year periods of drought, massive floods. It's the same for people living in large parts of the States (some of whom also live with earthquakes).

It's perfectly possible to live in an unpredictable environment and thrive in it with the use of a bit of savvy. The aboriginals managed it for 10,000s of years.

This is something that I just don't get why we are not more advanced. Look at Chile, much poorer than us, yet they have fantastic building codes due to earthquake risk.

Similarly you can go to many Caribbean islands and providing the people there aren't v poor, as was the case in Haiti, then many houses are built to withstand the weather.

We live in one of the most expensive housing regions in the world yet seem wholly incapable of achieving something that poorer countries are managing. If people were losing their lives as much as their money (I'm glad they are not), this would get far higher up the agenda.

CLAPTON

vivatifosi wrote: »

This is something that I just don't get why we are not more advanced. Look at Chile, much poorer than us, yet they have fantastic building codes due to earthquake risk.

Similarly you can go to many Caribbean islands and providing the people there aren't v poor, as was the case in Haiti, then many houses are built to withstand the weather.

We live in one of the most expensive housing regions in the world yet seem wholly incapable of achieving something that poorer countries are managing. If people were losing their lives as much as their money (I'm glad they are not), this would get far higher up the agenda.

yes but we haven't had many earthquakes recently.

Many of the floods have occurred for the first time in living memory.

Clearly we need to review what needs to be done and start putting suitable schemes in places.

It's more likely that appropriate land management will reduce flood risks that new building codes (even though will be needed too).

SailorSam

CLAPTON wrote: »

Parliament is on a flood plan.

And the money they can't find to protect Cumbria can be found to protect London.

Generali

SailorSam wrote: »

And the money they can't find to protect Cumbria can be found to protect London.

Cost benefit analysis means that will always be the case.

SailorSam

True but if you were in tears outside your flooded home this morning having lost everything.
I'd be thinking why help them and not me.

Sapphire

SailorSam wrote: »

And the money they can't find to protect Cumbria can be found to protect London.

There were no floods in London, and there was very little rain, so it's hardly surprising that London was 'protected'! This assertion that is being banded around is thus rather silly (it's like blaming the government for an act of God, when such major rainfall was unprecedented, according to scientists).

London is, in fact, at great risk of flooding, especially given the amount of building that has been going on there recently, and the fashion for paving over everything so that water cannot run off (it amazes me that people are still being allowed to pave over their front gardens, as is happening in the streets around me). The Thames Barrier will prove ineffective to flooding before long, due in particular to the effects of climate change (which so many people have been in denial about because it suited their own vested interests).

London is built on a floodplain. At one time places in the East End, for example, were inundated every year and people waded around in a foot of water – since they were poor, hardy workers, this was just an accepted thing. Drainage and so forth has 'helped' to prevent this in recent decades. Creating 'marshland' areas for the water to drain off could help (though this would be a major and very costly project, and would no doubt be resisted, again by those with vested interests, in property for example). However, the sea cannot be held back indefinitely, and coastal erosion and encroachment by the sea is inevitable.

CLAPTON

SailorSam wrote: »

True but if you were in tears outside your flooded home this morning having lost everything.
I'd be thinking why help them and not me.

I don't know your situation and one doesn't want to be unkind; but money has to be spend where it is most cost effective.

Wasting money that can be better spent, simply damages everyone for little gain.

Clearly more money will have to be spent but we need a bit more research before rushing in for political purposes.

SailorSam

Sapphire, London is protected from flooding by the Thames Barrier. And i understand they're having to close that a lot more often than they use to 'cos of rising sea levels. So many more millions are going to be spent to continue giving London the protection it has grown use to.
Why is the life of someone living in the south of our Country worth more than the lives of people from the North ?