Freuchie Flood Action Group

Something a little different for once and certainly off topic!

The Fife Herald has a report this week about the beloved and respected Cameron MacKenzie who has pledged to do a 10k walk once a month for the next 10 months as a way of raising awareness of and funds for Alzheimer Scotland. He and his family are dedicating this to the memory of his wife Joyce, who lost her battle against this condition last year. The feat is all the more impressive when you learn the ex-Minister is eighty years old. 

Anyone who takes an active involvement in village life will know Cameron well through his good works and participation in the community that has over the years made Freuchie a much richer place to stay in. We now have an opportunity to support him in his endeavours.

Good luck and best wishes to Cameron.

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Fife Council will shortly be closing the C23 Freuchie Mill Road for the surface water drainage improvement scheme works.

The works are programmed to commence w/c 15/3/10 to 4/4/10 for 4 weeks.

Traffic management measures and diversions will be in force for the duration of the works.

Hopefully people won’t be too inconvenienced while these important works take place.

Technorati Tags: C23, drainage improvement, Fife Council, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill

Freuchie Community Council has released the November 2009 meeting minutes. They are available from here on the Smart Community Fife website.

Technorati Tags: Freuchie Community Council, Smart Community Fife

Happy New Year to one and all.

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Merry Christmas to everyone from Freuchie Flood Action Group.

Technorati Tags: Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Merry Christmas

Another lingering effect of the recent flooding manifested itself yesterday afternoon. John Thomson, Freuchie Flood Action Group chairman, discovered he had no hot water or heating. Turns out the flood waters had likely got into the regulator and / or meter mechanism, which then froze up due to the cold snap.

Scotia Gas Networks replaced the meter and regulator within an hour of the fault being logged by the Scottish Gas engineer who came along to investigate the fault. First class service by both Scottish Gas and Scotia Gas Networks.

Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Scotia Gas Networks, Scottish Gas

At the Freuchie Community Council meeting last night Cllr MacDiarmid announced the intention of Fife Council to bring forward the work required to reduced the flood risk from water running down and off Freuchie Mill Road. It has been indicated that the work will be completed by February / March 2010.

A few weeks ago council officers came onsite to look at the problem and to start the process of looking into possible solutions. We liaised with these officers and offered our local knowledge and some of our ideas for flood prevention measures. Surveyors are onsite today taking measurements for the Freuchie Mill Road Drainage improvement works. Good progress is now being made on this project.

Thank you to our local councillors and Fife Council officers for recognising the urgency and importance of this work and prioritising it accordingly. This small project is going to make a considerable difference to the flooding issue at Freuchie Mill.

Technorati Tags: Cllr MacDiarmid, Fife Council, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Community Council, Freuchie Mill

During the Community Emergency Planning meeting this week,  the community was joined by representatives from Fife Fire & Rescue Service. We cannot stress enough how much value there was in having Tom Fox (Glenrothes Station Manager) and Neil McFarlane (Deputy Chief Fire Officer) come along to the meeting.

Tom delivered an enlightening and informative presentation, during which he covered everything from emergency planning and procedures, operation capacity, health and safety, equipment available to fight back flood waters and many other areas. It is amazing how much information he supplied in only 15 minutes. 

During the Q&A segment, Neil commented:

We (Fire Service personnel) will put our lives on the line to save your life! It is what we sign up to do.

This was certainly a wow moment! The general public know the emergency services routinely go into dangerous situations, but it doesn’t fully strike home the dedication and sense of duty these brave men and women have in the delivery of public service until you’ve heard it from their lips.

It was incredibly sad to see the death of PC Bill Barker in Cumbria while he was serving the local community. His wife’s words reported on the BBC website illustrate his dedication to serve the public. Freuchie Flood Action Group would like to express our immense admiration for PC Barker’s bravery and heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and work colleagues.

Now back to Neil McFarlane for more insightful words:

In times of flood, we must comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act. We have to work safely and minimise the risk to ourselves and the general public. Property owners do not have the same constraints and may well perform actions that we would not be able to do.

Residents must recognise the emergency services are working within the confines of the law of the land. They have the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the training and have over many years devised safe procedures and systems of work for all the emergency situations they experience. When emergency service personnel instruct residents to perform a certain action it is being done by professionals who assess and deal with life threatening risk every day. Do not ignore these instructions and recommendations or you may end up making the ultimate sacrifice!

FFAG would like to thank both Neil McFarlane and Tom Fox for accepting our invitation to last week’s meeting and Freuchie Community Council for providing the timeslot during the meeting. The information they shared with the community was very enlightening and useful. The whole community looks forward to working more with the outstanding professionals from Fife Fire & Rescue Service in the future, although we do hope it is proactive rather than reactive fire fighting… or maybe that should be flood fighting!

Technorati Tags: Cumbria, Fife, Fife Fire & Rescue Service, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Community Council, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Health and Safety at Work Act, Neil McFarlane, Tom Fox

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 

Technorati Tags: flood, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Freuchie Mill, Freuchie Mill Weather Station, Twitter

A tweak has been made to the Freuchie Mill weather station to bring it into line with our local SEPA rain collection station. Instead of the day being from midnight to midnight, it will now be 9am to 9am.

The computer running the data collection and website publishing will be switched over today. This may result in 30 minutes of downtime, during which there won’t be any updates, while we switch things over.

Technorati Tags: Freuchie, Freuchie Mill, SEPA, weather station