Sadly, we’ve become very experienced at dealing with the impact of flooding in Oxfordshire and thus the county council and its partners had very well-established procedures in place when things began to get serious early in the New Year.
Rarely does a winter go by when there isn’t a period or two when rivers rise threateningly. This was one of the more difficult episodes we’ve had in the last decade with water rising well beyond flood warning thresholds on many watercourses through the Thames catchment area.
We’d been braced for action for a while. This has been the wettest July to December period in England since 1890 according to the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. River levels had been high in their normal range or in flood alert territory for many weeks. What we didn’t need was a very wet start to January. That’s what we got with Storm Henk and other weather systems,
The emergency planning experts in our resilience team began triggering our procedures and internal structures once the heavy rain of 4 January was forecast. Given the river levels it was clear we were going to be in difficult territory.
Before long those meetings were co-ordinating a very real-life flooding response: Fire and rescue were active day and night, rescuing people and pumping water from properties. Adult social care worked to help and sometimes relocate vulnerable people as well as conducting additional welfare checks. Highways teams distributed sandbags and attended to roads that needed closure due to rising water levels. The dots were joined between all this activity to make sure there was shared knowledge and synergy between all parts of the response.
On top of this came our heavy involvement in the Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum response. Councils, the Environment Agency, the police, Thames Water, the NHS and many others met very regularly for several days, including the weekend, to respond to the challenge of this incident.
Our smaller tributary rivers in Oxfordshire all flow into the Thames and our initial response usually involves helping communities suffering from swift peaks on those small watercourses. Soon after the focus fixes on the Thames itself which rises more slowly. As always the water moved through west Oxfordshire, Oxford and in to southern Oxfordshire. This latter area undoubtedly experienced the worst of this incident and had the heaviest of the early January rainfall.
Of course, once that water has peaked on the Thames in Oxfordshire it moves further south and east of us into Berkshire. That is the beauty of the TVLRF system, the co-operation is already happening and neighbouring areas work together very well.
Residents can sign up to have text message alerts and community groups quicky get the message out that there is going to be a problem and there is vast and detailed information on the Environment Agency website. Nonetheless it is essential that communications from all partners is consistent and abundant especially during that phase when rivers are peaking. There is also a key role for communications in warning and informing once it has become clear that already high river levels and forecast heavy rain are going to cause an issue.
As always following such an incident there will be a post-event analysis, both internally within the county council/within Oxfordshire and across the Thames Valley. These are events that test the resilience of all organisations. Of course they also test the resilience of the residents we serve and there are real life practical consequences for them in their homes and businesses.
A lot of work was and is taking place on helping communities recover from this incident. We hope for drier weather but we stay prepared for the consequences of heavy rainfall or other winter hazards. With climate change these incidents are not going away any time soon and we are in a permanent state of preparedness and vigilance.
Stephen Chandler is executive director (people) and Carole Mackay is resilience manager, Oxfordshire CC
