floods

[John Pruden]

has any member been efected by the bad weather.jp

[Captain Kong]

Has anyone noticed, since the closure of the small ports around Britain, and since dredging stopped at these ports and the dredging of Rivers , we now have floods.
The River Mersey at the top end by Manchester was always being dredged with Grabs and the stuff dumped on the banks making them taller. this has stopped and there are now flood warnings. Fleetwood, since the closure of the Port has stopped dredging, the sand bars and sand banks are increasing.
It is like putting a cork in the bottle.
If water can get out then there will be no flood, if it backs up then the banks overflow and the area is flooded. If the river bed is lowered by five feet then the surface water is lowered by five feet and does not over flow into the roads.
Many small ports around the coast have closed to shipping so why dredge, it costs money, then it clogs up.
Are the people in authority so thick they cannot understand that?
The idea is,,, it is cheaper for the authorities not to dredge and let the peoples Insurance rates go up and the people will pay for the flooding. What a scam.
I live next to a small lake which is 50 feet below the level of my avenue. then it runs off down an other 400 feet to a reservoir which would then drain off to a river 50 feet below that. so to flood my house the water levels would have to rise over 500 feet.
When I insured my house a couple of months ago they told that as I lived 400 metres from water my insurance would go up by over £100. The use GOOGLE maps to see where I live.
How Bent is that.?
Cheers
Brian.

[Richard Quartermaine]

We had the most amount of snow in 30 years at Katoomba at the top of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney on 12th October and we were overjoyed. It was 30 degree Celsius today so bush fires are the worry this summer. We had one mighty blaze right up to our back fence quite a few Christmases ago that was stopped just in time.
Here is our house and my Margaret with Cleo the Briard dog.

Richard Q

[Keith Moody]

Richard
that picture of the snow around the house looks very nice and a pretty picture, it is like me today just looking outside, we have had snow for the last couple of days continously with a bit more to come , the temprture is not too bad only -21 last night, but the good news is it will get warmer with daytime temps. over the next week of -12 to-17, by new years eve it is usually around -40 to -45 and we do not have a mountain in sight to look pretty.
just be thankfull you don`t have to wear heavy cloths every time you go out.
keith moody
R635978
on the prairies of canada

[Keith Moody]

Winnipeg in the middle of Canada has 2 rivers running through it, the Red and the Assiniboine, both used to have river boats running on them in the old days, so they are quite large, one comes up from the USA, whilst the other comes from central manitoba, both have a tendancy to flood in the spring run-off when all the snow melts, the worst flood was back in the 1950`s when most of the lower part of the Province was under water including Winnipeg where in some areas it was up to roof level, then again just a few years ago we had another bad flood. what saved winnipeg this time was a large dyke that had been built around the city with a channel up to the lakes, even so many places were washed out including a number of the Indian reserves, now most of the country farms and villages all have their own dykes around them, it has cost our province millions of dollars to do this but it has also saved a lot of people their homes and livelyhoods. due to the high water level of the last flood they have widened and deepened the major dyke to take more water,
keith moody
R635978
Winnipeg

[Lou Barron]

Hi Richard the snow round you house is a bit like my house in the winter we get snow and to me i hate it the kids when they growing up just loved it .When my two grand children came over from Alice Springs they had never seen snow and they just loved it

[happy daze john in oz]

Saw some of the floods on TV here, bit scary I must say. Brain may well be correct about river dredging, but of course the Greenies will say it is global warming!!. Must have been global cooling then up in Catoomba!! But it is dry here in Oz, very wet winter but a very dry Octember, only about 30 mls over the two months. Now it looks like the Simpson desert in most parts of Victoria. Going to be a bad year for fires I suspect.

[Calvin Kent]

If you build on flood plains as this country has for years then you shouldn't be surprised when the water backs up and comes into peoples homes. Even where token flood defences have been undertaken to allow building you are only moving the problem downstream onto some other area. Every town of any size has looked to impeach on the rivers running through them and caused bottlenecks. The landscape has been shaped over many centuries and only man is stupid enough to think he can control nature to his own ends. I think we on this site know the power of water more than most.

Regards
Calvin

[Richard Quartermaine]

...............on the prairies of canada

Thanks Keith. When I left the sea in early 1953 I went to Canada where my mother's brother had lived since being demobbed after the 1914/18 war. He was in Ontario and later Toronto and St Catherines, Ont.

I got myself a job right away as an endorsement clerk in the automobile dept of the then (Canadian) Western Assurance Company in Toronto. It was all very new to me and as time went by I was fascinated to be issuing six months endorsements for "Winter Cancellation" of automobiles where they were laid up on blocks for the winter in places like Cobalt, Ont and of course the Prairies, etc. There was also our agent in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory where in summer barges plied the Great Bear Lake whereas in winter there was a 'road' across it.

My girl friend there came from Winnipeg, Selkirk it was, and she told me that there were times when you might park in a street and later find your vehicle was immovable, maybe even for weeks. I spent two and a half years in Toronto and decided I to go back to Aussie. I asked my girl friend to come with me but her family thought it was too far away. But that's another story.

I read a book recently published named "On The Rails" about a young fellow from Winnipeg during the Depression in the 1930s. The story is written as a novel but I think it is basically true life. Anyway, you can read the first paragraph on the author, John Owens' website On The Rails by John Owens - Home

Cheers, Richard Q

[Richard Quartermaine]

Have just viewed the devastating floods in Britain on the television which must be very hard on those affected, especially at this time of the year. May the situation ease and that notice is taken of the reasons for the floods.

Richard Q