Flood line.

[KateLMead]

Oh dear Kaz what a worry! 70 taken ill and I think now in hospital, drink bottled water if the problem is sewage, alternative carbon monoxide leak has been suggested. No confirmation yet. It does not take a great brain to realise that contaminated water and sewage will cause sickness. Governments will have a lot to answer for Kaz hope your offspring remain OK dear xxxx

[Kaz]

I would think so Kate - and now Carbon Monoxide poisoning is being mooted as the cause in that case!

Thank you xxx

[Workingman]

I hope C & H are safe and well Kaz.

I thought that it could be carbon monoxide if the family were without electricity and were using portable gas for heating and cooking, but I am also wondering if it could also be sewage gas?

[Aggers]

I think it is sickening to hear of the suffering of so many people.

There is more to come. I fear. What the hell has gone wrong with this once great country?

The official comment will no doubt be, "Lessons have been learned".

This Government wants a damn good shake up.

[KateLMead]

I am writing to Cameron. (Not that it will make any difference)

[cromwell]

I've been looking up a bit about the Somerset levels. It is reclaimed marshland. Over centuries it has been used as farmland after the land was drained; at some point Dutch engineers were used back in the 17th century.
So if you neglect the drainage system, you are going to have a problem - pretty obviously?
For the last 15 years no dredging has been done on some of the rivers running through the levels; one of the first acts of the Environment Agency was to scrap a large proportion of the dredging equipment they inherited.

It comes down to this; maintenance needs doing but it is expensive and unglamorous. There aren't many brownie points in it. It was the same in IT; support was thankless because everyone expects things to be working. People working in support only ever got abuse when things didn't work, never praise when they did. Development of new application was where the praise and the promotions were.

So the EA hasn't been doing the maintenance work that it should. Transport London (who run the Tube?) have lengthened the intervals between inspections of the railway track; I have heard that Netword Rail have done the same. Years ago an old lad was on the TV. He used to work on reservoirs, clearing the culverts that drain water from the moors into local reservoirs. He went to inspect one - totally overgrown. Essential maintenance is being neglected on our infrastructure.

On the BBC this morning it transpires that right this minute, the environment agency is planning to make more of it's workers redundant; not something that "Lord" Smith mentioned the other day.

eta - Just found this:-
Equivalent quangos in the rest of the world are much smaller, the Environment Agency for England alone has more staff than the Canadian, Danish, French, German, Swedish and Austrian equivalents, combined!

So maybe they do need to lose a few.

[Workingman]

We used to do a thing known as "preventive maintenance", it was the standard at which to operate. Well, it was with aircraft, we really did want to prevent them falling out of the sky. The thing is that it was costly, with no tangible benefits, but not as costly as tons of metal one day plunging to earth.

The cost/benefit of preventive maintenance is shown in sharp focus on the levels. Yes, a few bob might be saved for a few years, but when things go wrong boy does it cost a lot more, and not simply in monetary terms, than a little bit of housekeeping would have cost.

Another thing. When I see similar events unfolding around the world one of the priorities appears to be to get the troops/national guards at least on stand-by with manpower and equipment and ready to move at a moment's notice. Not here. I guess that our lads and lasses are now so stretched that they cannot provide that sort of relief any more.

[cruiser2]

Like WM I was in the RAF and serviced aircraft. I have refused to sign the log book as I did not think the aircraft was safe to fly.
Regarding carbon monoxide poisoning, I have investigated an accident where one person died and several others were affected by the fumes. This was at a foundry at the top af a structure in the open air.
Using an internal combustion engine or other device with a nacked flame inside an enclosed place is asking for trouble. It is the ratio of oxygen to the remainder of the rest of the gases which is important. I can't remember the exact figures but only a few per cent difference can be fatal.
Concerning the railways, I can remember the wheel tappers and the track maintenance men who walked along the track, tapping the wedges to hold the rails in place on the sleepers.
Preventative maintenance seems to be a dirty word, just look at the potholes on the roads. There has been a large area in the center lane of the M6 just north of J27 which I avoid for over a year.
Looking at one of the pictures on TV, the water is now above the arch in one of the stone bridges. This means the bridge is now acting as a dam wall. It was not built for this sort of pressure yet this possible damage has not been mentioned.

[KateLMead]

I think it is sickening to hear of the suffering of so many people.

There is more to come. I fear. What the hell has gone wrong with this once great country?

The official comment will no doubt be,

"Lessons have been learned".
" GRRRRRRRRRR" you know my feelings every time I hear this crap!!!



This Government wants a damn good shake up.

[Kaz]

They will do something now that it's so close to London, I'll bet. In the meantime my eldest lad is stranded in his flats as they are surrounded!