I must admit, the sun made its usual valiant effort this morning to fight its way through the lowering clouds, but to no avail! Meanwhile, with more and more rain continuing to fall right across the entire South of the country and Wales having to take the brunt of it, the Boss decided to put us on a precautionary “orange alert” (well, more of a subdued tangerine really with maybe a hint of cerise) so that we’re all prepared to seek out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go, looking for the places only they would know….and give them a helping hand with a few basic supplies or even relocation if they need it!
Mind you, things have to get pretty desperate for the UK’s incumbent Emergency Services to need our help, after all, they are the best in the world at this kind of thing, but you never know….It’s just that we like to do things our way and above all, avoid the media because of all the other stuff we do during the rest of the year from a wildlife perspective, but that ain’t always easy at times like this! Nevertheless, during the last twenty-four hours, many roads in Wales have become impassable, rivers have burst their banks, hillsides are subsiding and many homes have been flooded….and now much of that water is making its way via a complex network of river systems right towards the Severn and its surrounding flood plain. In fact, we don’t actually have to go to IT….it’s coming right towards US, even as I type this! Plus more severe weather warnings were issued for both the North of Wales and the North Of England earlier today (6th September) and that may well result in more water arriving from the Midlands!
Our advice to home owners throughout Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset who found themselves flooded-out last summer, would be to move as many of your possessions upstairs as possible (if you have an upstairs that is) or that you take your most treasured and/or valuable items round to a friend’s house where they’ll be safe. It might also be a good idea for you to store some extra drinking-water in containers upstairs (fill the bath, etc) and it might be a wise move to nip down the shops to buy extra tins of beans, spaghetti, soup, etc plus a few packets of biscuits and some cartons of UHT milk….or anything else you think might be useful in an emergency, such as matches, candles, wind-up torches and a little camping-gaz stove and put those upstairs as well.
I went on about this last year and I know that a few people I’ve spoken to in the Tewkesbury area have been buying a few extra tins of this and that and storing bottled water for months as a basic precaution. After all, the last thing you want if you’re fully preoccupied with the struggle to keep flood-water from entering your home, is to be worrying about how you’re going to feed your family!
Alarmist? Not really….just common-sense precautionary stuff! Ask any of the hundreds of families in Gloucestershire alone who lost everything they had in last summer’s floods (some of them incidentally, are still waiting for the insurance companies to pay up) if they think I’m being alarmist. I can tell you for nothing that many of them are worried sick at the moment! I was born and raised in and around Tewkesbury and I know a lot of those people personally and if I’m in a position to help any of them , then I will and so will the Boss!
