Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Day After Tomorrow...

The last couple of days really have been like something out of 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

The flooding in Sheffield & Rotherham started around lunchtime on June 25th and completely overwhelmed the region. By the time I left work 25 miles to the North half of Sheffield was out of power and the roads were becoming impossible to navigate. In the end it took me over 6 hours to get home (at one point I move about 500 yards in an hour).

Truly petrifying experience. My car was battered by mud, gravel and spillwater flowing down hills and I had to jump out a few times to re-attach mud guards that had been ripped off.

Got home to find no power and it wasn't restored until late last night. We've now been told that there will be rolling blackouts for the next 48 hours as the power companies struggle with the sheer scale of the problems.

There are loads of videos on the web, but here is a selection of interesting ones:

Shef Weds football club. My house is half a mile (uphill, thankfully) from here.
Meadowhall flooding. One of the largest shopping malls in Britain is a mess. All ground floor shops have suffered damage internally. The stock lost will run into the millions.
The RAF rescue. The RAF pulled over 100 people out of swamped buildings well into the night.


4 people have now died in the floods around the region and with more rough weather expected at the weekend, the fear is that the rivers may not have receded enough to prevent this happening again.

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