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.

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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

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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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

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

Following the flood near miss two weeks ago, Freuchie Mill residents have today installed the Floodplan Door System on a number of properties to provide protection from the ingress of flood water via the front and back doors.

Photo: Homes protected by the Floodplan Door System

There are still a couple of private house to be done and Kingdom Housing has informed us they will be fitting Flood Door Guards from Flood Stoppers within the next week or two.

Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Floodplan, Floodplan Door System, Flood Stoppers, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill

With a great deal of effort and more than a little luck Freuchie survived the very heavy rainfall that fell on the East of Scotland on Sunday. The small flood improvement measures we have already made since the 2008 floods, the help of many people from the community to manage flood water, the early assistance of Fife Council and the heroic efforts of Fife Fire & Rescue Service all added up to saving our village from a repeat of the devastating 2008 floods.

Freuchie Flood Action Group is aware of many areas that were being monitored and at least two location where active flood protection and prevention works were being carried out. We would have liked to have been out and about doing more observations but our time was consumed fighting back the flood waters in areas known to be at high risk.

Let’s take a whirlwind tour of these area and highlight the key points.

ALBANY CRESCENT
The run-off from the fields to the south of Albany Crescent was putting the homes in this part of the village at risk of flooding. Only the prompt action of local residents who dug appropriate drainage channels, and then travelled to Cupar to collect and deploy sandbags, ensured that properties – many of them occupied by elderly and vulnerable individuals – survived unscathed despite the 18 inch-deep water in the streets.

Patrick Laughlin, Chairman of Freuchie Community Council, was amongst those helping at this location, and was also out and about during the afternoon observing the nature and sequence of flooding throughout the village. He said afterwards that the day’s events had served to highlight that flooding was an issue which now threatened to affect almost every part of Freuchie. At Albany Crescent, the impromptu dams which were built to divert water away from the most-threatened properties were effective and necessary, but had the side effect of directing the waters down other streets previously felt to be risk-free.

Please contact us if you have photographs of the flood waters in this area of the village.

FREUCHIE DEN
No reports as yet of property flooding up Freuchie Den. Work was carried out last year to reduce the risk of flooding and it would appear to have been successful. 

 
Photos: Farm road to Freuchie Den and bridge downstream 

The information and photographs clearly show an area that still requires further flood prevention work to lessen the existing flood risk.

GREEN TREE BRAE
Alarmingly high water levels were observed further downstream on Freuchie Burn. A usually babbling brook type flow had turned into a torrent that was engulfing land adjacent to the burn banks. Flood alarms installed by residents were activated warning of a danger of flooding.

  Photos: Freuchie Burn at Green Tree Brae

The burn rose to such a height that it would have been flowing over the walkway of the old bridge, had it still be there, putting the homes at the bottom of Green Tree Brae at high risk of flooding. Thankfully the unsafe bridge was removed earlier this year and the gap in the wall bricked up as a flood prevention measure.

FREUCHIE MILL
Last and certainly not least! Freuchie Mill would likely have flooded to property damaging levels if we had seen another hour of rain.  The culvert would have been overtopped by the Millwaters Burn if the rain had not gone off when it did. At its height the burn water was starting to lap onto the top of the gabion baskets. Unfortunately we were too busy fighting the flood to take photographs at that moment!

 
Photos: Freuchie Mill culvert inlet end one hour before peak flows and the diversion pipe that was reinstated

Thankfully our request for the diversion pipe to be used, Fife Council’s work to inspect the pipe along its length and Kingdom Housing’s restoration work have proven to be a life saver on this occasion. The diversion pipe was operating at full bore and really made all the difference during this weather event.

 
Photos: Freuchie Mill culvert outlet one hour before peak flow and during the peak when flooding was starting to occur

On this occasion, the greatest flow of flood water into Freuchie Mill came down from the Chicken Farm and then cascaded down Freuchie Mill Road, joining in with the flood waters already coming down the road. The drainage, or should that be lack of drainage, requires immediate action along with the correction of the incorrect road camber that brings nearly all the run off water down into Freuchie Mill. The flooding on the road resulted in a car parked in one of the Freuchie Mill Road cottages being written off.

Photos: Flooding begins with run off from Freuchie Mill Road 

Fife Fire & Rescue Service arrived at a timely moment to help with the flood protection work. We requested they deploy a pressurised fire hose across Freuchie Mill Road as a damming measure to stem the flow of flood waters. Pumping out operations began swiftly thereafter to keep the water to a very minimal level.

 
Photos: Fife Fire & Rescue Service arrives onsite 

It quickly became apparent the fire hose wouldn’t be enough by itself thus a frantic search began to find materials to dam off the road. A source of rocks and bricks was found allowing the firemen, residents and Andy Walls of Kingdom Housing to start the construction of a two tier dam structure that took the majority of the flood waters down the side of the bridge and into the stream downstream of Freuchie Mill. A big thanks to all the residents from surrounding properties, most of whom weren’t under threat of flooding, but still came out in cold and wet condition to lend a hand – we couldn’t have done it without you. 

 
 
Photos: Dam construction on Freuchie Mill Road

Towards the end of the flood event a few of the private homes in Freuchie Mill started to see the flood waters rising. This was caused by the burn waters that come down through Freuchie Mill House and run underground around the back of the the west side private houses having no where to drain off to and therefore bursting through the back gardens. Most of these houses already had flood protection measures in place  to prevent the majority of the dirty flood water entering the underfloor void. Once again the firemen jumped into action and started to pump out the areas now being flooded. Unfortunately there was damage done by this phase of the flood: holes in gardens, subsidence of driveways and loss of property from garden sheds and bike storage units. The losses will run into hundreds of pounds to repair and replace the flood damaged items, but it could have been so much more!

Photos: Flood water starts to threaten houses in Freuchie Mill

Just as in previous flood events, Fife Fire & Rescue Service personnel were magnificent and we cannot thank them enough for their hard work, professionalism and skill in dealing with the flood waters. Only one fire appliance was required to keep the flood water level at a minimum, although it took additional personnel on the ground to win the day. The Fire Service prevented £500,000 of flood damage with the related loss of four social housing units and eight private homes for six months whilst recovery and restoration work took place.

Fife Council must also be thanked for dispatching sandbags out to us. The personnel manning the operation were working under enormous pressure and unbelievable demands.

The small flood protection measures already taken substantially improved our chances of surviving extreme weather. There are other small measures that can now be taken to make further improvements without substantial capital spend. We will be working to implement these as quickly as possible.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Climatologists and other weather professionals are predicting extreme weather events will be more frequent and intense over the coming years. Every near miss allows us to better understand the flood sequence and the flood protection improvements required to prevent future property damage and threat to life.

Please let us know if you have any photographs of flooding in Freuchie. Likewise get in touch if you know of any area of Freuchie under risk during this event that we aren’t yet aware about. The information we glean from every report and photograph improves our knowledge immensely.

Photos are courtesy of Ross Robertson, Ian Porter and John Thomson.

Technorati Tags: Albany Crescent, climatologists, East of Scotland, Fife, Fife Council, Fife Fire & Rescue Service, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Community Council, Freuchie Den, Freuchie Mill, Green Tree Brae, Scotland

Civil engineering contractors Mouchel performed routine inspection on the Freuchie Mill Road bridge this morning. This is performed every two years on behalf of Fife Council. The bridge looks to be in fairly good condition, but then again the engineers who built this bridge knew how to build structures to last many lifetimes!

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It is sad to see the rainfall of the last few days has brought flooding to Scotland again. The BBC website has a round-up article worth viewing.

Meanwhile here in Freuchie residents were concerned at the height of the two burns that caused such devastating damage in August 2008. Luckily we avoided the heavy downpours that lead to surges in watercourses thereafter causing fluvial flooding. There has been consistent light rain interspersed with occasional heavier downpours, but we’ve not had anywhere near the intense heavy rainfall experienced in 2008.

Photo: Freuchie Mill culvert at 10am on 4th September 2009 

The flood affected residents of Freuchie have certainly got fingers crossed over the next few days that we see little or only light rainfall. Heavy downpours would be most unwelcome due to the high watercourse levels and saturated ground.

Technorati Tags: flooding, fluvial, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill

Residents at Freuchie Mill are delighted to see the completion of the culvert repair work at No 19. The sound of running water, the visible culvert pipe and the large hole in the garden was a source of ongoing anxiety and stress for many of the residents. 

The drainage contractor appears to have done an excellent job of fixing the damaged section of culvert pipe and reinstating the lawn, which should be back to normal in a few weeks once the grass starts to sprout some green shoots.

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