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The meeting was held in Walcott village hall last evening to discuss with officials from the Environment Agency, North Norfolk District Council and the Police to discuss the events of the flooding of Walcott on the 8/9th November 2007.
The Police failed to attend for the second time, the first being to the Scrutiny Committee at the NNDC offices a day earlier. The officer was said to be on other urgent duties.
The villagers were given background information but became quite annoyed when it was little to do with Walcott and more to do with North Norfolk who were not as affected by flooding.
When the attention turned back to Walcott, the Environment Agency representative, said that the Flood Watch was correct as it was the waves which were coming over the top of the sea wall which caused the flooding rather than the sea itself being so high it came over the wall this way.
He was swiftly corrected by the wardens who said the sea was higher than the wall as they were there to witness it. I asked how he could equate a Flood Watch situation with water actually coming into peoples houses, which meant a Flood Warning should have been the correct level but he was adamant that the Flood Watch was still correct. (Madness)
The Environment Agency Warning System reliability was called into question on many accounts. People said, they could not get registered on the system as their postcodes were not recognised by the computers. Others reported the Environment Agency system went down for hours as so many people called them, no one could get through to ask about conditions. Other means of communication from the Agency went down when the electricity cut out so phones, TV and radio warnings were not heard and of course at 5.00am in the morning many people were asleep in their beds and wouldnt be watching TV anyway. Because of the system crash many people did not get their Flood Watch calls either.
However, officials are assuring us that this is the way forward. They are not living in Walcott or having to live with the system they are forcing us to have which failed on all accounts on the night of the worst sea surge for 50 years. My own personal experience was that I did receive a Flood Warning some 12 hours earlier, which was not updated, we went to bed unaware of the imminent danger as no updates were given because of the failures and would not have been given anyway because of the Flood Watch level. We were awoken at around 5.00am with water coming feet deep to our doorsteps.
The Environmental Health representative from NNDC who was in the Silver Control Room during this time confirmed that they were "comfortable" they stood down from 11.00pm until 3.30am. When asked who was in the control room during these times, it emerged no one was there until it reconvened at 3.30am. This left the whole of the Norfolk coast without this control room on the worst sea surge for 50 years. They saw nothing wrong with this, however the whole room thought otherwise.
We presented a petition with over 500 signatures to Save the Siren, there was a look of suprise at the amount of signatures collected on the panels faces. When asked why the siren was not sounded, the response was:
1) It would panic people and large numbers would evacuate to the assembly point and should casulties could occur which would leave council officials liable to court proceedings and prison.
2) People would go into the flood waters and it would be more dangerous for them. (We wanted the sirens sounded before it flooded, but they didnt want to answer that scenario as it didnt fit in with their thinking )
3) If the keys were handed to the flood wardens to sound the sirens, they would then be liable if anyone got injured or killed and court proceeding and prison could be the outcome.
We then asked the Civil Contingencies Manager for NNDC about his views on the sirens and about his report on the sirens where he said the were an example of limitation, no longer fit for purpose, not required by the police or Environment agency, ageing technology, no power back up and long lead for forecasting backup.
Ther question was not answered but questions were hurried along by the chairman of the meeting who just happened to be a Cabinet councillor with special interest in the Environmental Health Department of which the Civil Contingencies Manager is a part.
(Keith, the OBN was there to be seen in Walcott last night)
I spoke to the Civil Contingencies Manager later and he said he was going to remove the report from the Internet. I make no further comment on that. However, when they said that they were not against the sirens, it was very different from the report written in January 2007.
The bottom line response from the panel was that no one died. When responded to that it was only down to luck that the winds and sea levels made disaster only inches away, thir response was a complacent, no one died. They were very lucky.
We will be given a questionaire to find out what we think about the sirens, however this is being managed by the council, the questions worded by the council and statistics recorded by the council. As we had no confidence in the councils performance on that night, we feel that the questions will be shaped to the councils advantage and not the residents of Walcott. When asked if we could have input into the questions about the siren, it was refused.
The representative from Norfolk County Council was well received for his informative and common sense approach and earned a round of applause as did the flood wardens.
After the meeting, it was "off the record" that it was admitted that Walcott is likely to keep its siren but no guarantees were given that if the flood wardens asked again, it would be sounded.
We had a small victory, we asked for a siren testing which has been agreed, at least we would know it is operational but again with the proviso that it might not work when it was sounded the next time.
Walcott feels let down by the Police, NNDC and the Enviroment Agency, they say there are lessons to be learned, the first is to admit to their own failings and not pass the buck between agencies to save their own skins.
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