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Lapping
at the Queen's doorstep: As floods hit Windsor, nearby villagers flee
homes swamped by the swollen Thames
Daily
Mail,
10
February, 2014
The
Thurner family set sail from the front steps of their Victorian home
in glorious midday sunshine, stepping into a small kayak that had
been rowed up the high street of the normally idyllic commuter
village of Datchet.
Daughters
Beatrix, Scarlet and Marina were lifted carefully into the
precariously-bobbing vessel, before a bowl of Pedigree Chum was
placed inside the hull to convince Ruby, a young boxer dog, to join
them.
Last
of all came mum Sian and dad Robert, carrying suitcases which contain
the provisions which must sustain them until the murky flood waters
covering half of Berkshire subside.
Waiting:
A royal lodge at Windsor Castle by Albert Bridge in Windsor, about to
be overcome by flooding
‘I
bought this canoe so we could go up and down the Thames at weekends,
and have the occasional picnic,’ said Robert, a marketing
consultant. ‘I never realised I’d be using it to evacuate my
home.
‘We’re
getting out because this house has no back door and the front is
going to be inaccessible pretty soon, which will leave us with no way
in or out. So for safety’s sake, we’ve decided to make a move.’
Before
rowing away from the home they have owned since 2003, Mr Thurner, 46,
had moved furniture upstairs, emptied the wine cellar, and built a
wall of orange sandbags across his front door.
Similar
defences were being mounted across Datchet yesterday, as families
decided whether to stay put or head to higher ground, as the flood
waters edged slowly but relentlessly higher.
More
than 200 Royal Navy engineers, tens of thousands of sandbags, and a
600m flood wall have been employed to protect this village of three
pubs, a church, and 5,000 residents situated a few miles downstream
from Windsor Castle.
But
as the day wore on, it became increasingly apparent that their best
efforts would not be enough to prevent a disaster of some form.
Water
had begun to trickle down the high street shortly after midnight,
after breaching a flood wall to the north of the village. By
breakfast time, it had turned the railway line into a canal.
Train
services into Waterloo, on one of the county’s busiest commuter
lines, will be out for at least a week. The cost of repairs and lost
business: tens of millions.
On
the village green, a small puddle was turning into a lake, closing
the main road and submerging park benches. By the afternoon, water
was lapping its way up the war memorial and slopping its way into
low-lying homes.
A
panoramic view of the deluged streets of Datchet in Berkshire, where
locals face weeks of misery
A
public health crisis is all but inevitable, since sewage treatment
works upstream at Marlow and Cookham were swamped over the weekend,
disgorging their contents into the Thames. The occasional whiff of
effluent attested to the fact that sewage had found its way into the
village, where dirty water is expected to remain for at least a week
after the flood peaks.
‘It’s
contaminated the whole of the riverside,’ says Ian Thompson, a
parish councillor. ‘You can see white gunge everywhere. We’ve got
contamination everywhere. It’s disgusting.’
More
worrying, perhaps, was the sight of youths rolling up their trousers
to wade through the filthy torrent. ‘I had a word with a couple of
ladies to control their kids,’ adds Mr Thompson. ‘I said, “don’t
you know they’re walking in raw sewage?”
'People
have no idea. Schools are shut, and they all think it’s a big fun
day out. It’s all a game for them.’
There
was certainly a bizarre sort of carnival atmosphere in Datchet
yesterday, as younger residents enjoyed being at the centre of an
international media circus.
A
handful of teenagers used rubber dinghies to sail into the backdrop
of the BBC’s rolling news cameras, or tied bin liners around their
legs and waded to a partially-submerged royal jubilee memorial in the
middle of the green.
The
older locals weren’t laughing, though. With water from the weekend
storms expected to arrive in Berkshire today, homeowners are steeling
themselves for weeks of damage and disruption.
Little
wonder, then, that David Cameron’s occasional appearances on the
village pub’s rolling news screen prompted cries of ‘too little,
too late’ from patrons.
The
real venom, however, was shared for the small number of Environment
Agency staff who somewhat sheepishly appeared at lunchtime, wielding
clipboard and wearing high-viz jackets, to ‘advise’ locals how to
protect their homes.
Soaked
station: A railway line near the village was virtually turned into a
river
In
the eyes of anyone who has lived in Datchet more than a few years,
the village’s plight is unequivocally the fault of the embattled
agency.
At
fault, they say, is the EA’s decision, in the Blair era of the late
1990s, to green-light construction of the ‘Jubilee River’, an
artificial waterway designed to prevent flooding in the upstream
towns of Maidenhead and Windsor.
The
seven-mile channel effectively splits the Thames in two, creating a
relief channel which protects Berkshire’s major population centres.
But
where the Jubilee River ends, the two waterways are effectively
channelled back into one, creating a ‘pinch point’, below which
villagers say there is now a dramatically increased risk of flooding.
And
that point is just a few hundred yards upstream of Datchet.
Before
the Jubilee River opened in 2002, Datchet hadn’t seen a major flood
since 1947. It has now been flooded three times in just over a
decade.
‘When
they built the Jubilee River, there was a big public inquiry, and the
Environment Agency and their hydrogologists came along and claimed
there’d be no extra risk of flooding here, because their computer
model told them,’ says Roc Di Millio, who has lived in the village
for 30 years.
‘We
always knew they were talking rubbish, and now it’s just a case of
“I told you so”. They’re totally incompetent.’
After
the 2003 flood, the agency agreed to build a flood barrier to the
north of Datchet. But with the Thames now nearly 12ft higher than
usual, that line of defences failed late on Sunday night.
Mr
Thompson says Datchet and surrounding villages have been ‘sacrificed’
protect larger, wealthier towns upstream.
The
playing fields of Eton College, two miles away, where the Battle of
Waterloo was famously said to have been won, are now suitable for a
re-enactment of Trafalgar. The Queen’s dairy farm in Windsor Great
Park, which is home to Windsor Castle, is submerged, and several of
her servants’ grace-and-favour cottages have water lapping at the
walls.
At
teatime, Robert Thurner paddled back to his front door, to rearrange
sandbags and place a ‘lucky’ toy – a model of Noah’s Ark –
on the front steps.
‘We’ve
known this was coming for weeks,’ he said.
‘So
here’s what I don’t understand. In Holland and other countries
where large amounts of the land are below sea level, they seem to be
able to deal with heavy rain and rising tides. Here, in Berkshire, we
are above sea level. So why can’t we seem to deal with it?’
The
flooding and storms that have brought misery to thousands have been
described as the worst on record.
But
60 years ago a much greater disaster – in terms of both deaths and
destruction – hit the UK.
On
January 31, 1953, the storm of the century claimed more than 300
lives in Britain’s worst peacetime disaster.
Many
died in their beds, others were swept away by the raging torrents or
perished from the cold as they clung to their rooftops waiting to be
rescued.
For
18 hours, force 11 storms and high spring tides combined to smash sea
defences, flood more than 150,000 acres of land and wreak £1.2billion
of damage (at today’s prices) along the east coast.
Lack
of a national warning system meant that whole communities were
unaware of the threat. Some 307 people lost their lives in England
and 19 in Scotland – a death toll comparable to the worst nights
of the Blitz.
Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent were the worst affected.
Canvey
Island in Essex sustained the largest loss of life, with 59 killed
when a storm surge hit homes.
The
storm began on the west coast of Ireland before passing over Orkney
and then down the North Sea.
Water
poured through the unfinished sea wall in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire,
flooding 1,500 homes, and a tidal surge swept over the sea walls in
King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and into 400 homes.
Across
the UK, 32,000 were evacuated, while 160,000 acres of farmland were
rendered useless for years.
Radio coverage
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