What is flooding? In the words of flood communities

Over the last few weeks, I have been blogging about flooding from a management perspective and talking a lot about the human impacts of flooding and living at risk of flooding.? Which gave me pause for thought.? Most of the human impacts of flooding are unseen, seemingly silent consequences. Silent to everyone but the people whose homes flood. ?I’d therefore like to take this opportunity to use quotes from people who have flooded (and for many frequently flooded) to graphically illustrate the human impacts of flooding.? Their words are far more evocative than mine:

“To me personally, it is a 24/7 nightmare and you’re just waiting for it to happen again.

[flooding is a] nightmare. Nightmare. I think I'd say a nightmare that is going to last you probably for the rest of your life”.

“When people talk about personally being flooded it is a very emotional thing.? It's, it’s something which you physically get upset by and erm. I think you can't impart in words what you actually suffer”.

“I can't sleep at night when it's raining”.

“(Flooding) is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy really. It's, it's horrendous. your life is put on hold, your whole life is put on hold, (its) disruptive, whatever words you want to use, it becomes a nightmare until that water starts to go down again”.?

“The water is OK, the months after drying out, the incompetent builders shafting you, promising to be back the next day and then not turning up for weeks, the hassle of having to buy everything again and coming back to a house that does not feel like home as it is all so new and different.?The loss of your home is a grieving process I had not expected; it was all just STUFF, but it went to your core.? Things you have saved for and had provided a familiar?surrounding just ruined”.

“The first initial contact from the EA saying something, you know, the water levels are rising and then you are constantly on alert and you don't sleep and you don't, you don't function properly”

“The worst was the old boy XXX an RAF veteran…. his boiler (flood damage) was broken, so he was boiling a kettle and taking it upstairs to wash with.? When I did go and see him, he said to me, and he cried, and he was so smart with his jacket and his badges and he said I've been bombed out, I've been shot at, I've been starved, and nothing was this bad”.

“So even when I come home from work and I open my new front door the first things that’s there is your new front door because you were flooded.? And even once I've stepped through my new front door, I step onto my new carpet, and my new hall stairs carpet and I look at my new wallpaper and then I come in and I sit on my new sofa erm and its just everything, not just the actual work to get the authorities [doing something] it's just that everything in my house reminds me of it.? erm when I go to bed at night it's the last thing I think about.? If I wake up in the night, it's there, I'm never not thinking about flooding”.

“I'm going on holiday to Tenerife in January. So, the floodgates will be put into position, um, that will be put there. I'll be monitoring, uh, the forecast and the river gauges while I'm on holiday. Um, the family will be briefed as so to the situation. Um, and things of particular value or sentimental value will be pushed upstairs and um, other than that, it's in the lap of the gods really after that”.

“I've got a colleague who lives a mile up the road and his wife has not been on holiday for 20 years because she's frightened of the flooding if she does go away”.

I don’t think I need to add anything else, do I?