• 2 months ago
Panorama S2014E06 Britain Underwater
Transcript
00:00Some parts of Britain have been transformed.
00:13Yesterday, I was just shaking all day.
00:17I screamed, I couldn't stop shaking.
00:26As wild storms battered the coast...
00:29As you can see, the wind's picking up every now and then.
00:34..the heaviest rainfall for a century fell onto sodden land
00:38and the waters rose.
00:41I think I'm still in shock.
00:43I don't think it's hit me yet, personally.
00:47For weeks, Panorama has been filming
00:50with the people living with the floods.
00:54Families driven out by the water.
00:58This is what flooding is really like.
01:00It's really just horrible and filthy and dirty.
01:04With so much of the country under threat,
01:07how do we decide what we protect?
01:10You experts, you flooding experts, get down here,
01:13get your waders on, get your dry suits on
01:15and get the data you need to help prevent this happening again.
01:19Who chooses who gets saved?
01:23And who gets sacrificed?
01:26We've been abandoned. Everything that's been done,
01:28we've had to fight to do ourselves.
01:30We're fighting to raise money.
01:32And is the government being straight about the choices we face?
01:37It's stupid politics.
01:39It's stupid politics not to tell people the truth.
01:50It's a cold February night on the Somerset levels.
01:55And water is rising in the village of Moorland.
02:04Yeah, I mean, in here, at the moment,
02:07you can see we've still got power running.
02:10What a work.
02:12We have power running.
02:15I guess that really decides that we're definitely going tonight.
02:21We are with the emergency services
02:24as they try to keep people safe.
02:28Even their control area is starting to flood.
02:32Check those two properties because we can't confirm.
02:35And then we're going to check the other two properties.
02:38OK.
02:40And check those two properties because we can't confirm.
02:43Yeah. And then come back to me and then I can update cops.
02:51Hi.
02:53Hello there. I'm sorry to wake you up.
02:56Just double-checking.
03:03Not everyone wants to go.
03:07Right, this is our dining room.
03:09Phil and Lana have lived here for 39 years.
03:13Disaster area, basically.
03:15We started this morning. Yes, yes.
03:18And we've been bailing out with buckets of stuff
03:21from about 7.30 this morning.
03:24But as fast as Lana tries to get the water out,
03:28it's rushing back in and rising all the time.
03:32It's come into the bathroom.
03:34This has happened approximately an hour ago, it started,
03:37and it's completely covered now.
03:41The water from the levels picks up slurry
03:44and contents of septic tanks, etc, etc, etc,
03:48and so it's pretty unpleasant.
03:53It feels like a losing battle.
03:58Well, this morning I got up and I felt sick, physically sick.
04:02Yesterday I was just shaking all day.
04:05I just couldn't... I couldn't stop shaking.
04:08Yeah.
04:10Sorry.
04:24Much of Moorland is under three feet of water.
04:33Louise Barnett lives down the road from Phil and Lana.
04:39Look at this.
04:41Look at this, there's pictures of them.
04:44School photographs.
04:48This is what flooding is really like.
04:50It's really just horrible and filth and dirtiness.
04:53Bournemouth's house is just under water and she's saving what she can.
04:56Here's another bag. Shall I take it?
04:58Great.
05:00Are you all right? How are you feeling?
05:02A bit like I want to scram everything up.
05:09The village has been turned into a different place.
05:13The water is dangerous and destructive.
05:16It's horrendous.
05:18Absolutely horrendous.
05:20I think I'm still in shock.
05:22I don't think it's hit me yet, personally.
05:26Jim Winkworth is a farmer and landlord of a local pub.
05:30He showed me around a landscape transformed.
05:34How long has that been like that?
05:36Well, the road's been closed since New Year's Eve.
05:39Right.
05:41So it's a fair old time.
05:43Yeah.
05:45It's been a long time.
05:47It's been a long time.
05:49It's been a long time.
05:51It's been a long time.
05:53It's been a fair old time.
05:55Yeah.
05:57There are villages here that have been under water for nearly seven weeks.
06:04They don't care about us because they've kept Orton dry
06:07and they've kept Bridgewater dry and they've kept Bristol dry
06:10and all this kind of stuff.
06:12Us few homes and businesses out here, we're not high on the agenda.
06:17It is true not everybody can be defended.
06:21So it's about choices, protecting the most people for your money.
06:25And here, that means protecting the nearby towns.
06:30So how do they do that?
06:32Well, here the rivers haven't burst their banks.
06:35The banks have been lowered to let the water pour out.
06:40This is a pumping station
06:43and when the river Tone here reaches a certain point,
06:46when it gets too high, a spillway here diverts the water
06:49and plonks it on the land.
06:51The problem is the system completely falls apart
06:55when there's this amount of water.
07:00These new inland seas look dramatic
07:03and they've washed through about 600 homes.
07:07But this water didn't surge downstream
07:10and that means 36,000 people in the nearby town of Bridgewater
07:15were protected.
07:17We do store some flood water in one of the moors,
07:20which is designed to protect larger communities.
07:24Unfortunately, what has happened,
07:26given the amount of rainfall that we've had,
07:28is that that moor has then overflowed into other moors
07:31where there are communities and, regrettably,
07:33people have been flooded.
07:36So villages on the levels get flooded in part
07:39as a consequence of protecting the town.
07:42The other part is the record rainfall.
07:47The south of England has had the wettest January in 250 years
07:52and nationally, since 2000,
07:54we've had four of the five wettest years on record.
08:00So does that mean we should expect
08:02more extreme weather?
08:08It's very hard to make predictions on a near-term timeframe
08:11when you're talking about climate change,
08:13which operates over decades,
08:15but what you can say is this gives us a sense of what there is to come,
08:19that if we don't do anything,
08:21then we will be subject to increased risks
08:23of the kind of floods that we're seeing at the moment
08:26and those we would expect to happen more frequently.
08:29The chairman of the Environment Agency,
08:31the body that's responsible for fighting floods,
08:34says we're now facing tough choices
08:36because we can't defend everything.
08:41Now, the government usually relies on their advice.
08:44After all, they're the experts.
08:49But this time, the Prime Minister disagreed.
08:54There shouldn't be a false choice
08:56between protecting the town
08:58or protecting people who live in the countryside.
09:03Why would the government continue to say
09:05it's a false choice between town and country?
09:07I really don't know. I mean, they were telling an untruth.
09:10They were not being clear about the policy.
09:12They were pretending that they could protect everybody.
09:14Can you see that? It just sounds like, irrespective of the evidence,
09:17you're trying to say something that makes everybody happy.
09:19No, I don't accept what you're saying at all.
09:21Of course, you're still going to need to prioritise flood defence projects.
09:24I've been clear about that.
09:26All I'm saying is you shouldn't exclude rural communities,
09:29and that's what the Prime Minister's saying.
09:34The Environment Agency says it's protected 1.3 million homes
09:39during these floods, like here in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.
09:45Back in 2007, this town was hit hard,
09:48and across the country, 48,000 homes were flooded.
09:53This time, only 6,000 homes have been affected.
09:57Yet in some areas, the Environment Agency
10:00is being blamed for some of the flooding.
10:07So here on the levels, people are very, very focused on dredging,
10:11and they think that if the rivers had been maintained,
10:14then all this flooding wouldn't have happened.
10:18There we go.
10:20To dredge or not to dredge has become a national debate.
10:26The idea is if you make the river deeper by digging the silt out,
10:30you can carry more water away.
10:35But faster, deeper rivers bring water more quickly
10:38from the hills into flood areas.
10:41The Environment Agency says
10:43stopped routinely taking silt out of the rivers years ago.
10:47And in Somerset, that decision is widely blamed
10:50for the flooding and its consequences.
10:53I just can't keep going with the threat of that river
10:56and the flooding and the main road being closed,
10:59and if you can't get people into the business,
11:02then you can't hear the till ring.
11:04Who do you blame?
11:06I blame the Environment Agency.
11:08I believe if that dredging was stopped,
11:10then this flood would never have started.
11:12I feel I've been abandoned.
11:14In the end, the government listened
11:16to what Jim and his campaigners were saying.
11:19Dredging was back.
11:21A senior minister even apologised
11:23for listening to the Environment Agency.
11:26I apologise unreservedly,
11:28and I'm really sorry that we took the advice
11:31of what we thought we were doing with experts.
11:34It was a slap in the face for the Environment Agency
11:38and deeply demoralising for the workers I met on the ground.
11:42Environmentalists who know the levels say the minister was wrong.
11:46The Environment Agency advice has been very clear on this for years,
11:50that in many circumstances,
11:52dredging will actually make situations a lot worse.
11:55What do you think of the criticism of the Environment Agency?
11:58I think it's been completely misplaced.
12:00The Environment Agency has been used as a political football
12:03by people who know an awful lot less about these issues
12:06than the Environment Agency people do.
12:08This weekend, an independent study concluded
12:12that given the volume of rain,
12:14dredging would not have stopped the flooding.
12:17There is some evidence it might help clear the floods more quickly,
12:21but experts say dredging is not the answer here.
12:25I absolutely agree with the minister.
12:29I absolutely understand the call for dredging
12:33from people who are angry and hurt and feel neglected.
12:37I mean, people are really upset.
12:40Now, under those circumstances,
12:42I understand exactly why they asked for dredging
12:45and I understand exactly why politically they promised it,
12:48but it wouldn't solve the problem.
12:50What do you think about the way the government's treated
12:53the Environment Agency over the past week or so?
12:56Eric Pickles saying, I thought we were dealing with experts.
12:59Well, look, I've worked closely with the Environment Agency
13:02since Christmas.
13:04They've worked incredibly hard in very difficult circumstances
13:07and Eric Pickles has also said the same thing.
13:10So the first thing he says doesn't count any more?
13:13Eric Pickles has praised the Environment Agency.
13:15Yeah, after he criticised them. He said that for...
13:18Look, what I would say is Eric Pickles was basically reflecting
13:21some of the criticism that was coming, particularly in Somerset,
13:24of the decision not to dredge.
13:26And, you know, he was picking up on that criticism.
13:30So in spite of the expert advice,
13:33the Environment Agency is now about to dredge,
13:36just as ministers demanded.
13:39It's stupid politics.
13:41It's stupid politics not to tell people the truth,
13:44to take the easy way out, I'll give you lots more money,
13:47I'll do lots more dredging, I'll save you, I'm not persecuting you.
13:50In the long run, it doesn't help.
13:55It's not only in Somerset that some people are protected
13:59and others left vulnerable.
14:01The crucial decisions on what will be saved
14:04are made long before the rain arrives.
14:09On the River Thames, a £110 million project
14:13is protecting more than 3,000 properties.
14:16This is the Jubilee River and it's entirely man-made
14:20and it takes the excess water that falls into the Thames
14:23and converts it around Maidenhead.
14:28On a map, you can see how the new river keeps flooding away
14:32from Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton.
14:35After the man-made river rejoins the Thames,
14:38villages are no longer protected and have flooded.
14:42The money hasn't been spent on them.
14:45This is Raysbury and what I'm standing in, this,
14:49this is the Thames.
14:51The Thames has built its banks down there
14:53and there are now hundreds of homes,
14:55hundreds of families that are in the water.
15:02Defending Raysbury wasn't a priority.
15:06And locals say what makes it worse
15:08is they were offered no support when the water did arrive.
15:12We'll give you a road to go to.
15:14You can go with Mark now if you're willing to do that.
15:18When we met Sue Burrows last Monday,
15:20there wasn't much official help.
15:23She's an IT consultant who found herself tackling a major incident
15:27as a team of volunteers defended their village.
15:31This operation is entirely resident-run.
15:35We are absolutely being sacrificed.
15:37We are ignored, we feel left out.
15:39We do not exist in terms of the EA or anybody else.
15:43That same day, Sue managed to get her message to the very top.
15:47Go to Cameron, get your waders on, get down here now,
15:50because we need you.
15:52We need the army, we need people, we need bodies.
15:54We are doing this as a community.
15:56Raysbury will not go under.
15:59Raysbury is on the Thames flood plain.
16:02New homes are still being built here, despite the obvious dangers.
16:06In this village, three areas at risk of flooding
16:09have been proposed as sites for housing.
16:13Nationally, about 20,000 properties a year are built on flood plains.
16:18Around a fifth are at significant risk.
16:22Bruce Gilligan lives on the flood plain,
16:25but his house is built two feet off the ground to protect it from flooding.
16:29It wasn't enough.
16:31Once it breaches your home, because that's what it is, it's your home,
16:35you know, it just goes to another level.
16:38This is the first house that we've actually finished
16:41of getting every room how we want it.
16:51The day after Sue got Raysbury on the television, the army arrived.
16:56The soldiers we saw turned up without wellies
16:59but were put to good use making sandbags.
17:02A full-scale rescue operation was now under way.
17:06There's a female requiring evacuation.
17:12Drop it down a bit.
17:15We know there are still people in risky areas that's four foot under.
17:19We know it's dropping slightly in areas an inch, two inches down,
17:23but that's not feet and it's still dangerous.
17:26The effort to keep people safe through such extreme conditions
17:30has left volunteers exhausted.
17:32But Sue's efforts have won her some unexpected followers.
17:36You've got a letter.
17:38Sue Burrows, the wonderful lady of Raysbury.
17:40That's all it needs to get to you. It's fan mail.
17:45It's money.
17:47Dear Sue, sitting watching the television,
17:50I can only marvel at how wonderful you've been
17:53in all you've done for Raysbury.
17:55You must have been so tired and still you kept going.
17:58Being an off-pensioner, I can't help so really appreciate what you've done.
18:03Oh, my God!
18:09Help may finally have arrived in Raysbury,
18:13but residents are still wondering why they weren't protected.
18:19Could it be prevented, this flooding, not the rain?
18:22There must be something.
18:26They claim to be so clever.
18:34Well, a solution was proposed.
18:38Three years ago, the Environment Agency approved another man-made river,
18:43like the Jubilee.
18:45It would cost £250 million,
18:48but protect 20,000 homes, including the village of Raysbury.
18:53That's almost seven times as many homes as the Jubilee River protects.
19:01But it may never be built,
19:03because under new rules, the government will only pay half the costs.
19:08So the biggest undefended area of floodplain in England
19:12remains unprotected.
19:16The choices about what we do and don't protect
19:19aren't only about our rivers.
19:23Our coast has taken a pounding.
19:26We've all heard about Cornwall, the main rail line smashed at Dawlish.
19:34Enormous sea swells washing through the fishing village of Newlyn.
19:39And giant waves thundering into tiny harbours.
19:45But we haven't heard much about this place,
19:48the Norfolk holiday village of Hemsby.
19:51Yet this is what happened in December when it was hit by a storm surge.
19:57We all come running down here because everybody was shouting,
20:00saying the sea surge was taking people's houses away.
20:04And we've come running down here,
20:06and we've literally manhandled everybody's stuff out of the bungalows.
20:11So this house that was here was tipping into the sea?
20:14Everything that was on the floor that night,
20:17dropped straight through into the sea and washed away.
20:21This is the moment that one house was taken by the sea.
20:30The tidal surge took 30 feet of the village of Hemsby and washed it away.
20:36Many of the houses here are built on sand dunes.
20:40If you look out here, all this sea you can see,
20:43until the night of the tidal surge, we didn't have a sea view.
20:46We couldn't see them, wind turbines.
20:48You're joking. And all that land is being taken away all the time.
20:51What does that feel like? It's horrible.
20:53We don't know how much longer we've got to live here.
20:56Every night, if it's really rough,
20:58my neighbour and myself, we get our big torches out,
21:01and we look along the dune line to see certain markers.
21:04We look for the trees. If the trees are still there, we can go to bed.
21:07The future of some of this community has been decided.
21:11A plan, ultimately signed off by the Environment Agency,
21:14says Hemsby should accept a controlled retreat.
21:18So another 50 homes in the area will eventually be surrendered to the sea.
21:24These big blocks are tank traps,
21:26and they were put in place on the beach 70 years ago to stop the Germans,
21:30and they've been dragged up here to try and keep the sand in place.
21:34And these blocks are the only protection
21:37that this village has from the sea.
21:40People here don't understand
21:42why millions are being spent in the flooded south of England,
21:46but nothing is being spent here.
21:49We just feel like we're second-class citizens.
21:51Why? Because we're ignored.
21:53Do you feel abandoned then? We've been abandoned.
21:55The night of the tidal surge, we were abandoned then,
21:58and we have been abandoned ever since.
22:00Everything that's been done, we've had to fight to do ourselves.
22:03We're fed up with it.
22:05Everything that's been done, we've had to fight to do ourselves.
22:07We're fighting to raise money. It's not right.
22:11It's a situation being repeated around our coastline.
22:15In Wales alone, up to 50 communities, like here at Fairbourn,
22:19have been told they will no longer be protected.
22:22You cannot defend all the areas
22:24that we're spending a lot of money defending at the moment.
22:26That stands to reason.
22:27We've got a lot of vulnerable places around Britain, we really have,
22:30and I just think it's a matter of making choices,
22:32and these choices are painful.
22:34The reality that we're going to have to let some places go, do you think?
22:37Well, I think we can't rule out going forward that there may end up,
22:41yes, being parts of the country that we're able to protect
22:44if we're absolutely overwhelmed by rising seas,
22:47but all I can say is that we are spending record amounts of money
22:50on flood defence.
22:54So how painful could some of these choices be?
22:58The Somerset Levels fall below sea level.
23:01It's reclaimed land that the sea wants to get back.
23:08The water has to be pumped off every time it floods.
23:13So should we commit ourselves to millions in future spending?
23:20Certainly until the Bronze Age,
23:22there were pelicans breeding here in the Somerset Levels.
23:26This was sea, basically.
23:28This was at least for part of the year, every year.
23:31What we're seeing now is pretty well how it would have been,
23:35and we're looking at a situation which was already pretty perilous.
23:39Now we're seeing a situation which just might not be viable at all anymore.
23:44But how do you tell people their homes may have to be flooded?
23:51Well, I took George, the environmentalist,
23:54to Boroughbridge to meet Jim, the pub landlord.
23:59I should imagine there would be a lynching party.
24:03I really do.
24:05I think people feel that strongly about it, people losing their homes.
24:08Generations and generations of people have farmed here,
24:11lived here, and generations of people have grown up here.
24:14This isn't the position where I want us to be.
24:16It's not a position where any of us would want to be.
24:19But we're in trouble.
24:21So what is the answer, in your opinion?
24:23Well, I don't think there's one answer,
24:25but I do think that there are going to be communities on the Somerset levels
24:29where it's very hard to see how they can remain viable
24:33if we're going to keep being hit by stuff like this.
24:40What did you think, then, of what Jim had to say?
24:43People, of course, they love their homes, they love their communities.
24:47It's going to be very, very reluctant to be told
24:50that it's not going to work anymore.
24:52But, you know, there's a point beyond which you can't argue with nature.
24:59Nature is the source of these problems,
25:02but climate change could make the situation worse.
25:06The government is planning for more extreme weather.
25:11The reason that we are spending record levels of money on flood defence
25:15is precisely because we recognise that climate change
25:19may make these extreme weather events more regular,
25:23and that is why we're spending the levels of money that we are.
25:27But the government's own adviser on climate change says
25:31less cash than was promised is being put aside
25:34to protect us from future floods.
25:37He says there's already a £500 million shortfall,
25:41and it's set to get worse.
25:44By 2020, we think that the funding deficit under the current plans
25:48will grow to something just under about £2 billion,
25:51so we need to spend a lot more money
25:54if we are to manage those risks that we face of flooding in the future.
26:05Right now, many in southern England have more basic concerns,
26:10like what have they lost and when will they go home?
26:17Remember Phil and Lana,
26:19who were flooded out of their home on the Somerset levels?
26:22They're going back to see what the water's done.
26:26Where's worse?
26:28Ten times worse.
26:30Are you OK?
26:32Thousands are enduring such difficult times.
26:36Come and see our living room.
26:40I don't know if it's enough.
26:42You all right? No.
26:46Goodness me.
26:48We got everything as high as we possibly could.
26:59Faced with criticism about how much it's been spending on flood defences,
27:03the government has promised a review.
27:06And 1,500 job losses at the Environment Agency have been put on hold.
27:12It's predicted that we might not get back into this house
27:17until Christmas next.
27:19Oh, where do we go?
27:22It's up to the electric sockets.
27:25Oh, well, that's it then. We've had it.
27:37In the long term, there may be very difficult choices to be made.
27:43I think most people who live in any low-lying area
27:47should be aware of the risk they're at.
27:50They should then take steps to reduce that to a tolerable level,
27:54but mindful of the fact that it is a possibility.
27:57And if you honestly can't envisage that,
28:00if you can't be comfortable with it,
28:02then that is not a good place for you to live.
28:05It is a sort of war, and there are going to be casualties,
28:08and the best thing to do is to be frank with those people
28:11who are likely to be the losers.
28:15Unless we want to spend much more money, we can't protect everywhere.
28:23So if more extreme weather is to come,
28:26more communities could be left to the water.
28:36Tonight at ten, a new war of words in the debate over Scottish independence.
28:41All the latest on the flooding,
28:43and Robert Peston on whether China's economy has grown too fast for its own good.
28:48That's the news at ten on BBC One.
28:51In a moment of crisis, how Britain was ready to fight to the end.
28:55The story of Britain's great war concludes next on BBC One.