Freuchie Flood Action Group

The Freuchie Mill culvert webcam has been replaced and is now operational. An additional infra-red illuminator has been installed to improve image quality during the hours of darkness. Higher quality lenses with a shorter focal length (wider view) are on order for the webcams to improve the image quality further. The Freuchie Mill road camera will be operation when the new lens have arrive and been fitted to the replacement webcam.

It has been necessary to rig up a temporary access method while the software is being developed to handle not only the webcam images but also a water level monitoring, logging and flood warning alarm system. Hopefully this can all be done before the really nasty weather rolls in and people can go about their business knowing they can keep tabs on the culvert level and be warned when it is getting dangerously high.

Future posts will go into this in more detail as the flood alarm and monitoring system takes shape.

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The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for Fife, but the Scotland wide advisory is far more accurate:

There is a moderate risk of severe weather affecting parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland. There is the potential for heavy, thundery rain to give totals in excess of 50 mm in places, with an associated risk of localised flooding.

SEPA has issued a Flood Watch:

A FLOOD WATCH has been issued for Fife and Clackmannanshire rivers.

Heavy rainfall is forecast this morning. High intensity rainfall may cause flooding on small watercourses, roads and in urbanised areas.

Freuchie has seen 38mm of rainfall in the last 6 hours with more rain to come throughout today. Condition couldn’t have been better over the last few months for Freuchie to be able to withstand such a deluge. However residents who invested in flood defences would be advised to have them on standby.

There are a number of gullies blocked in the village and Muirhead. FFAG will report these to Fife Council for maintenance.

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Almost 30mm of rain, over an inch in old money, fell on Freuchie in the last 24 hours. The interesting, or should that be concerning, period of rainfall was between 9pm and 10pm last night when the rain was falling at a max rate of 36mm per hour. Thankfully it only lasted for a brief period.

Sky and Freesat TV viewers probably noticed their receivers losing reception just before the downpour – a good indicator that the skies were full of moisture just ready to come down as torrential rainfall. However it is a real shame if it spoils your viewing enjoyment!

All this makes for an interesting daily cumulative rainfall graph.

 Click on the graph to see a high resolution version (opens in new window).

Luckily all the water courses were running very low or dry before the downpour, the fields are full of thirsty crops and our extended dry spell followed by some light rain over the last week has left the ground ready to soak up a good deal of the rainfall. 

This has been the first decent fall of rainfall for testing the drainage scheme installed at Freuchie Mill Road a few months ago by Fife Council. The new gullies are certainly making a difference to the surface water running down C24 / Freuchie Mill Road, water that would normally all flow into Freuchie Mill. Although this isn’t a test of the same scale as the November 2009 flood event, it does bring a good measure of reassurance that the scheme will make a big difference. Thanks go again to Cllr MacDiarmid and Transportation Services for all their hard work to get this installed in time for the “wet season”.

Technorati Tags: Fife Council, flood, flooding, Freesat, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill, Sky

Reading the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 doesn’t easily clear up all the timescales for delivery of the various steps required to comply with the Act and ultimately when it is liable to bring real world flood prevention and protection measures to fruition. Surely there must be an easier way to find out the deliverables timescale rather than reading through and deciphering the Act? Yes, there is now. The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act Annual Report to Parliament 2009 has recently been published on the Scottish Government website, a report that appears to provide some of the outstanding answers being sought by flood survivors.

Date: 2016

Milestone: Publish implementation plans for delivering all measures set out in local flood risk management plans.

Lead: Local authorities

It is slightly alarming to see it could take until 2016 before local authorities publish their implementation plans. Gulp! Freuchie will undoubtedly have been hit by more flooding before this happens.

The intention is to lay a second commencement order in 2010 to bring into force Part 4 and the remaining sections of Part 6. In commencing Part 4, regulations setting out the transitional arrangements for transfer from the current statutory process for Flood Protection Schemes under the 1961 Act to the new process set out in the FRM Act will also be laid.

Part 4 of the Act relates to local authority powers to manage flood risk. Basically the local authorities gain all manner of new and strengthened powers and responsibilities for flooding in 2010.

In response to the long standing concerns surrounding the existing statutory process for Flood Protection Schemes, we are keen to allow local authorities to utilise the benefits of the new system as early as possible and without the need to go through a lengthy and complex period of transition.

Provision has been made to deliver flood improvements in a more timely fashion, but this will depend on your local authority pushing things along. In the meantime we need to push ahead under the old legislation and transitional arrangements – basically the outgoing regime that is no longer fit for purpose.

From 1 April 2008, funding of flood protection and coast protection schemes is not identified separately but the previous ring-fenced grant provision of £42 million in 2007-08 is rolled up in the General Capital Grant which is distributed to local authorities as part of the 3-year local government finance settlement covering the period 2008-11. The decision to substantially reduce ring-fencing was welcomed by COSLA and local government, and had no impact on the level of capital grant funding available to them. For 2009-10, local government was provided with a general capital grant of £462.64 million. The Scottish Government is continuing to deliver on its commitment to increase local authorities’ share of the Scottish Budget.

The report skirts around the issue of whether there has been increased spending on flood prevention since the change from ring fencing of funds to the Single Outcome Agreement. Going forward, a major worry has to be the potential for underfunding of flooding at local authority level. Councillors may well decide flooding is not a priority as the austerity cuts start to bite. Flood affected communities will have to lobby very hard to ensure councillors don’t make it impossible for flood officers to resource flood prevention and protection projects. Let’s hope we don’t hear Anne Robinson muttering, “Flooding… you are the weakest link!”

The Scottish Flood Forum (SFF) was set up in October 2008, with funding from the Scottish Government and the feedback received, from local authorities, community councils and individuals who have been flooded, on the services provided by SFF is very positive.

Freuchie Flood Action Group has the highest praise for the hard work and advice of Paul Hendy from the Scottish Flood Forum (SFF). We were the first flood action group to work with the SFF, a partnership that ensured Freuchie was well known by everyone that matters in the world of flooding! The commitment outlined in the report to extend the services available from the SFF is fabulous news for flood affected communities.

Elsewhere in the report, ongoing research and projects using Natural Flood Management (NFM) are mentioned. Developments in the flood warning service are welcome, but only become useful in Fife once the projects are rolled out Scotland wide.  The changes in areas of responsibility for the local authorities, Scottish Water, SEPA and other stakeholders are touched upon. A selection of large capital flood projects throughout Scotland are dealt with, but it is interesting to note the lack of information on any Fife projects currently underway!

Flood action groups and flood survivors will take a mixed bag from this report. In general it demonstrates good progress in dealing with flooding in Scotland.

Technorati Tags: Fife, flood, Flood Risk Management, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Scottish Flood Forum, Scottish Government, SFF

Residents throughout Freuchie are now on flood watch as water courses continue to rise due to the rain and snow falling on Fife.

SEPA has issued an alarming number of flood warnings throughout Scotland, including Fife and Clackmannanshire rivers.

This statement was prepared on 30 March 2010 at 4:24 pm.

A FLOOD WATCH has been issued for Fife and Clackmannanshire rivers.

Heavy rainfall and some snow is expected throughout Tuesday evening and into Wednesday for Fife and Clackmannanshire. Rivers are rising and localised flooding can be expected. Further updates will appear here as more information becomes available.

This FLOOD WATCH is now in force until further notice.

Concerned Freuchie residents have started to move their cars to areas of safety and items of value have been lifted above the flood level of August 2008. Flood defences are either primed or fully deployed in preparation for possible flooding.

Unfortunately this weather is forecast to be with us throughout tomorrow, with some forecasting services showing it to last into Thursday!

Technorati Tags: Fife, flood, flood watch, flooding, Freuchie, Scotland, SEPA

We’re now integrated and working with the Weather Underground website. Our station ID is IFIFECUP2 (automatic name, not our choice)

See current and past weather data on the Weather Underground website:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IFIFECUP2

Here’s what occurring at the moment:

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We’re trying to put in place as many different ways as possible to keep residents informed of the weather and flood information from Freuchie Flood Action Group.

You can now follow the Freuchie Mill Weather Station on Twitter. There will be a tweet every 60 minutes announcing the current weather data. The Twitter account name to follow is FFAGWSFM, which incidentally stands for Freuchie Flood Action Group Weather Service – Freuchie Mill.

Feel free to follow us: http://twitter.com/ffagwsfm 

Future weather stations will be offered as they become available. Please contact us if you have a weather station in Freuchie or nearby that is capable of getting data onto the Internet.

Finally, don’t forget you can also follow Freuchie Flood Action Group: http://twitter.com/ffag 

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SEPA has issued a Flood Watch for Fife.

FLOOD WATCH

This statement was prepared on 19 November 2009 at 7:03 am.

A FLOOD WATCH has been issued for Fife and Clackmannanshire rivers.

A band of rain will stagnate over Clackmannanshire today with widespread totals of 25 to 40mm at low levels and 50 to 60mm over the higher ground. As the ground is already saturated localised flooding is expected.

This FLOOD WATCH is now in force until further notice.

Please continue to keep an eye on the situation in your area and listen to local radio and television for further information.

The Met Office has also issued an Advisory of Severe or Extreme Weather for Fife that covers today and tomorrow:

There is a moderate risk of severe weather affecting many western parts of Britain. During Thursday very wet and windy conditions are expected at times with widespread rain and gales in places with winds gusting around 60 MPH. Rain will be heavy at times, especially over windward hills and mountains. Rainfall accumulations of 30 to 50mm are expected through the whole period with locally over 80mm mainly across higher ground.

Issued at: 0645 Thu 19 Nov

The weather forecast over the next 36 hours isn’t too good. Ensure you are prepared to deploy flood defences and you have moved all valuables, and anything else you can’t afford to lose, to an upstairs room or attic.

For those of you who been following our Twitter account, you may have noticed Freuchie Mill residents were heading to Cupar to collect sandbags to dam off Freuchie Mill Road and to fully protect the few homes that haven’t yet got flood doors. We got there to discover Fife Council would rather bring them out to us on this occasion.

FFAG committee members have also inspected sites around the village and further afield to ensure we have a handle on potential flooding. You may well have seen us out at 5am touring the village.

We have discovered the water draining off the railway is causing flooding at the chicken farm, water that ultimately ends up at Freuchie Mill.

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Webcams are currently being installed in flood risk areas of Freuchie to provide a mechanism for the residents to check from anywhere in the world if flooding is putting their property at risk.

At the moment these are still images captured every 5 minutes. In the near future it will be possible to subscribe to a live feed at a small annual charge.

Freuchie Mill is the first area being covered by this new system. Other areas will be done as finances become available to do the work. If you are interested in sponsoring a camera and have mains power and a wired or wireless broadband network available then we’d be interested in hearing from you.

Checkout the Freuchie Webcam Network.

Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Freuchie, webcam

Freuchie Mill now has a hand held air horn to signal a flood emergency. If you are first to spot the beginning of a flood then bang on the door of No 15 and we’ll get the alarm sounded. You could also use your car horn to signal an emergency situation. It is advisable to respond immediately to the air horn or a car horn sounding in a strange manner.

Get your car out of Freuchie Mill when the alarm goes off and put it up on Freuchie Mill Road or across in the main part of the village. DO NOT park on the bridge area or on the slope up to Freuchie Mill House as this prevents the emergency services from doing their job.

Residents at Green Tree Brae have flood alarms mounted to warn of the rising burn levels. We’re relying on residents at risk warning each other to the rising water level.

We will be looking into automating the alarms and monitoring over the new month or two, including the possibility of SMS (text) messaging, weather data and a webcam image of the area. More details as procedures and systems develop.

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