Freuchie Flood Action Group

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

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 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:

Technorati Tags: Freuchie, IFIFECUP2, Weather Underground, Wunderground

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

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.

Technorati Tags: Cupar, FFAG, Fife Council, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Met Office, SEPA

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

At last week’s Community Council meeting, it was agreed to organise a community led emergency planning meeting with a view to looking at how flooding can be responded to by the citizens of Freuchie. This is an extension of an idea put forward recently by Freuchie Flood Action Group.

Freuchie Community Council will be hosting a public meeting this week to start to identify and plan for an improved community response to the current flood risk and future flooding events.

The details of the meeting are:

Venue: Lumsden Memorial Hall

Date & Time: 7pm on Thu 19th Nov

All flood affected and at risk residents are especially welcome, along with Freuchie citizens who would be willing to offer assistance in times of flood emergency. This is very much a meeting of what we can and will be doing in the future and how YOU can help to prevent future flood devastation.

Technorati Tags: emergency planning, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Community Council, Freuchie Flood Action Group

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.

Technorati Tags: air horn, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill, Green Tree Brae, SMS