Poor, poor Germany

MerylStreep

Lemongrove
There’s no such thing as a subject that can’t be turned into a conservative bashing.
Having said that: your very smart, I bet you can think of one ?

I think the only person who has taken this over to the "Conservative Bashing" topic is you and your friend. You appear to have nothing to add to the topic except for some nebulous attack on other members.

As for other countries not helping us, timetogo2016, we were, of course given millions on EU grant aid while we were still part of it.

They will, of course, rebuild. They have done it before but this time they have Covid to cope with and, even if only for our safety over the virus, we need to ensure they get back to as normal a life - with Covid protection.

Apparently meteorologists forecast this and say everyone should have been moved out of the area but it was ignored.

Not here dragonfly46, the city of Liege was evacuated and other places too.

dragonfly46

Apparently meteorologists forecast this and say everyone should have been moved out of the area but it was ignored.

This is not what I read.
I understood there was a prediction of "extremely heavy" rain but that the computer modelling is not strong enough yet to be sufficiently accurate over "extremes".

"Computers are not powerful enough to accurately project the severity of those extremes"

"Computers are fundamental to weather forecasting and climate change, and computing will underpin the new climate science “Bible”, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next month."

Maybe we will get "super" international computers after this and the USA

Apologies. I have littered that post with inverted commas.

I can't think of much worse to happen to anyone! It is so dreadful. My sympathies are with them. There will undoubtedly be collections for them and I will dontate.

timetogo2016

I don`t remember any country helping us out when we had floods,and we have had some hum dingers ie yorkshire/shropshire/london to name but a few.
I feel for them of course,but Germany isn`t a poor country,far from it.

... when we had our flooding episodes, we were entitled to apply to the EU Solidarity Fund, a fund which grants aid money to countries suffering substantial damage from 'natural disasters'.

Accountants KPMG estimated the damage cost at around £5 billion, which entitled us to apply for emergency help. The Fund is aimed at the uninsurable costs of natural disasters.

Cameron's government refused to apply for the aid.

In 2007, the Labour government requested aid from the Fund and we were given £134 million. The then Conservative opposition welcomed the move, but criticised the Labour government for not requesting it sooner.

These are verifiable facts, and not government bashing.

Such a tragic loss of lives and homes.
Such severity can never be forecast.
I hope they get lots of practical help.

The countries involved will receive grants from the EU Solidarity fund that helps countries affected by natural disasters. We received 60 million euros ( I need to check that figure) after the 2016 floods after initially refusing it. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t donate money in some way if only to show that we care. But no money can take away the horror that those people have faced. Strangely enough I was only thinking of Boscastle the other day. It was the first time that I was aware of an unusual natural disaster happening and it hit me hard because I had lived there at one time and several people I knew were caught up in it: not locals but friends who were holidaying there at the time. When my own village came close to flooding I was shocked by how fast the flood water moved and realised that homes that weren’t actually flooded were still damaged because sewage and water from the drains was pushed up into the houses. I felt so helpless.

Greta
By the time people feel it, it will be too late.
I believe we have passed the point of no return.
Now our lungs ( the Amazon forest) is emitting more CO2 than it is absorbing. As we know when your lungs are stuffed, your in trouble and that’s just what we are in now.?

A sad and devastating loss of life and homes.
We lived in Brisbane during the floods of 74. Homes were swept away, dead animals floated past, people wept. It was horrendous. The smells were horrific. The clean up and rebuild took months, the shock and sadness lasted much longer.
I am not a fan of monetary aid but hope that we will help in practical ways with personnel and equipment.
I think this should apply to aid worldwide. Personnel, water pipes and systems, properly built sewers and solidly built shelters is more use to people in third world countries than money which is often syphoned off by corrupt leaders.
I don’t mean European countries in my last paragraph of course.

Can we all imagine what this would have looked like if had been in Spain ( on the costas)
The horror is that at sometime it is going to happen.

As far as I know local authorities are still granting planning permission for residential development in areas at risk of flooding. I guess meeting targets for new houses lies behind this. You can incorporate flood resilience in new buildings but I'm not aware this is a requirement.

LauraNorder, a good many NGOs - a dd worked for one for many years, inc. in several disaster zones - do take care that money is not diverted into corrupt pockets.

This is one reason, I’ve always gathered, why a multinational variety of staff are used in any senior position where a local person could be subject to pressure from an official, or e.g. a village elder. Dd has experienced just such a case - threatening behaviour from a village elder towards inhabitants, to make them hand over half the cash they were being paid to help with the clear-up operation. (This was after the tsunami of 2004.).

After bitter complaints from the workers, a visit to that elder ensued (he was a scary bloke with a rifle!) where he was told very firmly that unless this stopped at once, nobody would be getting any money at all.
It stopped.

Admittedly, government corruption could be harder to deal with. They had to wait several weeks for the vehicles that were urgently needed in devastated terrain, because they refused to pay the bribes demanded by customs. Who did eventually give in, once it dawned that they were flogging a dead horse.

Instinct perhaps- thinking about it, we have always bought homes at the top of a hill. We have so often fallen in love with houses by the water, and then said 'nah' just not worth the risk.

I hope we soon get instructions from help groups to tell us if and how we can help in any practical way. My parents hosted a family for a while, then just one of the teenage son, when I was a toddler- after a natural disaster.

We lived in Brisbane during the floods of 74. Homes were swept away, dead animals floated past, people wept. It was horrendous
I remember the more recent one in 2010 - a relative had just moved house two weeks previously and the house they'd been renting up until then was swept away.

I was very young, about 7, when the East Anglian floods (North Sea flood) happened but old enough to read the papers and hear my parents talking about the devastation then. Over 2,500 people died.

Greta

As far as I know local authorities are still granting planning permission for residential development in areas at risk of flooding. I guess meeting targets for new houses lies behind this. You can incorporate flood resilience in new buildings but I'm not aware this is a requirement.

It is shocking that this is happening, Greta. Some are being built near us - we were talking about it with neighbours and we're all agreed that we wouldn't buy one.

Flood plains are there to soak up flood water.

Callistemon
A friend of mine was born the night that Canvey Island flooded. The water started to come over the bedroom windowsill minutes after she was born.

MerylStreep

Callistemon
A friend of mine was born the night that Canvey Island flooded. The water started to come over the bedroom windowsill minutes after she was born.

There is a big campaign this side of the bridge to prevent them building 350 + houses on the flood plains at Jotmans Farm.
Absolutely ludicrous, the area which already has housing would become vulnerable to flooding along with the new builds.

GrannyGravy
Oh no!!!!
Many years ago I truly believed that my generation wouldn’t see the horrors that are surely to come, only my grandchildren. But now I’m not so sure.
Still, if the worst comes to the worst I have a couple of friends who live aboard in Wakering boatyard.

The EA who are responsible for flood prevention, quite bizarrely have no power to prevent flood plains being built on.

Years ago we used to have travelling theatre companies doing plays at our village hall. The last one I saw there was a black comedy about a couple who took to their boat after flood water started to rise around them. I really wish I hadn’t been to see it because it upset me at the time, the black bit being for more dominant that the comedy. It’s one of those things that sticks in your mind and keeps coming back when things like this happen. The village was built where two rivers met but, hundreds of years ago people knew where it was safe to build. They did some flood defences further upstream a few years ago and all they do is cause problems further downstream. It’s beyond me how people are allowed to build on flood plains.

Whitewavemark2

The EA who are responsible for flood prevention, quite bizarrely have no power to prevent flood plains being built on.

Developers have built most of our "government allocation" of new-buildhomes (3,600) on watermeadows not far from my home. The local council has loads of brownfield sites but the developers wanted new, green land as it's cheaper to build. I spoke to the senior planning officer about it and was told if the council had money to clear the land first, the developments would have been on the brown land but the councils have no spare cash. If they refused the green field sites then they would have suffered financial penalty from central government.

So the developers have built a series of lakes and waterways between the new homes which they obviously assume is enough.

A huge amount of land all over are built on floodplains....the whole of the Thames Valley for a start.

Flood plain development is fine until it isn’t.

Now the government has drawn back from helping the householder, and yet it doesn’t stop developers from building.

No householder whose property is in danger can now be sure that she will be given assistance.