Freuchie Flood Action Group

Merry Christmas to everyone from Freuchie Flood Action Group.

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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

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 

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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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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 Flood Action Group would like to wish the Scottish Flood Forum a Happy Birthday.

It is hard to believe a year has passed since Paul Hendy invited us along to the launch of the Scottish Flood Forum. The Scottish Government has resourced an important and worthwhile project for the hard hit flood victims of Scotland. Paul has been invaluable to us over the last twelve months and we hope our experience and local knowledge has been of some use to him.

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Freuchie Flood Action Group has organised for Flood Stoppers, a UK flood protection product company, to demonstrate their door flood guard products at 10am on Sunday 15th November 2009 down at Freuchie Mill.

Every one with an interest is welcome to come along.

Please let us know you’re coming so we can gauge numbers.

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Another excellent article by Liz Rougvie on Page 3 of this week’s Fife Herald. Freuchie gets a mention in a round-up of areas that survived flooding this time around.

Liz has also written the front page article on flooding. It is interesting to see Ming Campbell MP calling for proactive action on flooding. Freuchie Flood Action Group will be interested to hear how he is going to play a part in making this happen. His blog, as of today, fails to even mention the NE Fife floods of last Sunday.

The Fife Herald must have held the presses this week as we didn’t send them the published photo until Thursday morning. Normally you’ve got to get your submissions in by Wednesday afternoon for it to appear that week.

Thank you once again Liz.

UPDATE: Ming Campbell’s website appears to have been updated on the afternoon of the 7th November with a cut and paste of the Fife Herald article. See here.

Technorati Tags: Fife, Fife Herald, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Ming Campbell

… Natural Flood Management (NFM).

We’ve previously blogged about the new flood management technique “Natural Flood Management”. Basically, it involves working with rivers to reduce flood risk to people and their property.  You restore the features and characteristics of a burn that slow the water down but have been lost through farming etc with time. This involves, working with the farmers and foresters, allowing the burn to store water on its flood plain, letting trees grow along the bank to manage erosion and to provide leaky barriers to water movement, putting the bends back into straightened burns and blocking off drains to let bogs re-form. These measures can reduce the flood risk to those downstream.’

The new and world leading Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act has been written with a view to these technique being considered as part of any flood prevention / protection measure.

Now imagine our surprise when we see what can only be described as anti-NFM in action. This is best illustrated by some before photograph from last year and an after photograph taken earlier today.

Photos: Before… Mill Burn at Muirhead taken late 2008

 
Photo: After… Mill Burn at Muirhead taken September 2009

The burn now looks to be straighter, wider and deeper. This change will lead to an increased flow and an increase in water velocity thereby increasing the flood risk downstream. Freuchie Flood Action Group is very concerned about this work and will pursue this issue further with the appropriate authorities.

On Friday we discovered Network Rail employees draining off the natural flood plain back into the burn, which again significantly increases the flood risk downstream. We will also be pursuing this matter further.

 
 Photos: Network Rail draining the flood plain  

Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Natural Flood Management, Network Rail