Thousands more home-owners were warned they may have to evacuate as the flood crisis spread to the Thames last night.
The Environment Agency issued severe warnings – meaning water levels pose a ‘significant threat to life’ – to 14 areas along the river, with the deluge expected to be worse than the devastating floods of 2003.
The agency urged people in at-risk areas to ‘stay in a safe place with a means of escape’ and to be ready to evacuate.
The severe warnings for the banks of the Thames stretch from Datchet in the west to Shepperton, Surrey. By contrast, there are just two current severe warnings in Somerset, where 5,000 homes have been flooded in recent weeks.The dramatic development came as:
- Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles provoked fury by claiming the billions spent on foreign aid has helped prevent flooding in Britain by tackling climate change;
- Forecasters warned that storms will continue to batter Britain until the weekend;
- The warnings include Chertsey, where a seven-year-old boy died on Saturday;
- Three large pumps had to be brought in from Holland to help clear the Somerset Levels as a desperate battle continues to save the town of Bridgwater and the M5;
- The Ministry of Defence put another 1,600 personnel on six hours’ notice to help in the South if needed;
- More than 50 soldiers were deployed to battle rising waters around Burghfield power station in Berkshire amid fears it could be swamped, cutting off power to 40,000 homes in Reading and Oxford.
The Environment Agency said severe warnings were used only when flooding ‘poses a significant threat to life’.
A spokesman added: ‘This is the most serious warning we can give so there is a high risk of properties flooding and the possibility of evacuations.’
The 14 warnings along the Thames include Ham Court and Chertsey, where Zane Gbangbola died on Saturday.
Zane’s father Kye Gbangbola, 48, had complained last month about the lack of action to tackle the floodwaters. He is believed to have used a petrol pump in a desperate attempt to clear the water from his house, which he shared with Zane’s mother, Nicole Lawler. Police are investigating whether carbon monoxide fumes from the pump were responsible for Zane’s death. His parents were being treated in hospital last night.
Neighbour Anoop Hothi blamed Zane’s death on inadequate reactions to the floods. He tweeted: ‘The whole system has failed the UK, especially with the tragic loss of Zane Gbangbola.‘No-one should be left to their own measures like they have all over South England to overcome devastating flooding. Such a tragic loss.’
Floods have also spread into the Midlands with warnings that large parts of Worcester city centre could be closed for a week, the county council said.
Rail passengers between London and Kent face disruption because of a landslip between Swanley to Rochester.
But despite the mayhem, a senior official at the Environment Agency has hailed its performance as a ‘success story’.
Director of operations David Jordan said: ‘We need to recognise that 1.3 million other properties would have flooded if these flood defences had not been built. That is the success story.’
His comments came as Somerset flood victims launched a petition, calling for agency chairman Lord Smith to be sacked. They are infuriated by the Labour peer’s refusal to apologise for the devastation caused by his quango’s decision to stop dredging rivers on the Somerset Levels.
Butcher Malcolm Pyne, from North Petherton, near Bridgwater, who organised the petition, said: ‘To come down and see what devastation has been caused and then to try to defend and even praise the Environment Agency was tantamount to laughing in our faces.’ Meanwhile, it was claimed yesterday that foreign aid spending could ease global warming-linked extreme weather in Britain.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said that if global warming is true then the Government's ‘sustainable aid’ could have an effect on the UK's situation.
He dismissed the UK Independence Party's call for foreign aid money to be diverted to help British flood victims as a ‘populist hit’.
Mr Pickles added that the response effort in flood-ravaged Somerset did not need the extra cash.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage had said it was ‘basic common sense’ to suspend international aid while the country was dealing with the aftermath of recent extreme weather.
Asked what he made of remarks to deploy foreign aid to help with the floods, Mr Pickles told Murnaghan on Sky News: ‘Well, I think it's an easy hit, it's a kind of a populist hit.
‘We will be able to do all this without having to touch the aid budget and if it is true, global warming, and our aid is sustainable aid, then aid we're offering in other parts of the world could well have an effect in terms of the things that happen in this country.’
Told it was a bit of a stretch to suggest overseas money might help people on the Somerset Levels, Mr Pickles replied: ‘Our aid is pretty much targeted to help people in the greatest need.
‘It's well targeted in dealing with infection and inoculation but I think it's possible to be able to offer help to people throughout the world, the poorest, without it taking anything away from the people of Somerset.’
Mr Pickles had earlier struck a more cautious note, telling BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: ‘I've had the opportunity of listening to experts and after a little while it became pretty clear to me that from a really educated point of view nobody really knows. ‘To a degree I don't think it matters whether it's climate change or whether it's part of the cycle we normally see in weather - we've got to deal with the consequences.’
It comes after the Met Office's chief scientist said climate change almost certainly lies behind the storms that have been lashing Britain this winter.
Dame Julia Slingo said while there was not yet ‘definitive proof’, ‘all the evidence’ pointed to a role for the phenomenon. She also delivered a grim warning that the country should prepare itself for more similar events in future.
The comments came at a briefing for journalists as the latest wave of storms crashed into southern England.
It is the strongest link yet made by the Met Office between the intense weather and climate change, and backs David Cameron's remark last month that he ‘very much suspects’ a connection.New analysis published by the Met Office blames persistent rainfall over Indonesia and the tropical West Pacific for triggering the weather system.
‘The severe weather in the UK coincided with exceptionally cold weather in Canada and the USA,’ the document said.
‘These extreme weather events on both sides of the Atlantic were linked to a persistent pattern of perturbations to the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and North America.
‘There is a strong association with the stormy weather experienced in the UK during December and January and the up-stream perturbations to the jet stream over North America and the North Pacific.
‘The North Atlantic jet stream has also been unusually strong; this can be linked to an unusually strong westerly phase of the stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO), which in turn has driven a very deep polar vortex and strong polar night jet.’
Dame Julia said none of the individual storms had been exceptional but the ‘clustering and persistence’ were extremely unusual.
‘We have seen exceptional weather. We cannot say it's unprecedented, but it is certainly exceptional,’ she said. ‘Is it consistent with what we might expect from climate change?
‘Of course, as yet there can be no definitive answer on the particular events that we have seen this winter, but if we look at the broader base of evidence then we see things that support the premise that climate change has been making a contribution.’Recent studies have suggested storms are developing a more southerly track, and that has been ‘typical’ of the weather patterns here over the winter.
‘One of the most unusual aspects of the winter's weather has been the southerly track of the storms. We expect them to go well north of Scotland,’ Dame Julia said.
‘They have been slamming into the southern part of Britain. We also know that the subtropical, tropical Atlantic is now quite a lot warmer than it was 50 years ago.
‘The air that enters this storm system comes from that part of the Atlantic where it is obviously going to be warmer and carrying more moisture. This is just basic physics.
‘We also now have strong evidence that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense. That is emerging in the UK records, and it is seen very definitely around the world in other countries like India and China.
‘There is indeed as far as I can see no evidence to counter the premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly heavy rain events.’
Dame Julia said sea levels were expected to rise by a foot over time, causing more problems for those trying to deal with flooding.
‘That might not sound a lot, but when you are looking at storm surges, when you are looking at moving water from the Somerset Levels out to sea, it does matter,’ she added.
‘In a nutshell, while there is no definitive answer for the current weather patterns that we have seen, all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play in it.’Dame Julia said that detecting when and how such storms developed would become increasingly important.
‘We need to very urgently deliver much more robust detection of changes in storminess and daily and hourly rates,’ she said. ‘We have the data. We just need to get on and perform the analysis.’The Met Office is also working on modelling to establish the likelihood of the current weather patterns occurring without any impact from climate change.
Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: ‘With thousands of households still stricken by flooding, this fresh assessment of Britain's changing climate is a warning siren that cannot be ignored.
‘The Met Office is emphatic that a warming world will lead to more intense downpours, that storminess has increased and that rising sea levels will climb still further in the years ahead.
‘It's clear that the best form of insurance we have against worse floods and other extreme weather threats in the future is to burn less gas, coal and oil.
‘By appointing an Environment Secretary who doesn't take climate change seriously, this Government has turned its back on the science and cut flood defence spending when it should be cutting emissions.’Labour former international development secretary Hilary Benn said money could be found to help British people without touching the foreign aid budget.
Shadow communities secretary Mr Benn told Sky News: 'Frankly, the idea that we should take money away from children being vaccinated, lives being saved, treatment for Aids, children who are in primary school because of the generous support of the British people, and the money that goes when disaster strikes in other parts of the world, frankly I don't think that's the right thing to do.
'And I'm sorry that Nigel Farage has suggested it. If Government wants to find the money to help its own people, it can do so and it should.'
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said the science on climate change is very clear.
She told Murnaghan on Sky News: ‘We had the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report last year that said we must act to avoid catastrophic climate change.‘We're already seeing severe impacts of enormous amounts of extreme change occurring more and more often, so there really is no question.
‘The debate to be had is how we prevent climate change and how we deal with effects. There is no debate about climate change any more.Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven said: ‘It's been clear for many years that climate change loads the dice in favour of more frequent extreme weather events like floods, but now that the Government's own experts are making the link, the climate-sceptic quacks at the heart of David Cameron's Cabinet have nowhere left to hide.
‘With large swaths of the country underwater, and the transport and power systems cracking under the strain, this Government's failure to invest in making Britain more resilient to the impacts of climate change is a grave blunder that should trigger immediate questions about the competence of the ministers in charge.
‘Far from being an eccentric intellectual quirk, climate change denial is a grave risk to the future wellbeing and security of the people of Britain.
'The appointment of a climate sceptic like Owen Paterson as Environment Secretary may go down in history as Cameron's worst error of judgment.’
Desperate battle to keep the water out of Bridgwater
More Somerset families were put on flood alert last night as rising waters threatened to overwhelm the major town of Bridgwater.
An emergency dam was hastily being erected by the Environment Agency to protect 1,000 homes as the flood water that has already overwhelmed outlying villages flows downriver.
Thousands of others are also at risk, as up to one in three properties are situated on land below sea level and waters were yesterday rising at an alarming 5mm an hour.And with fresh storms expected tomorrow there are growing fears that rising waters will block the M5 – cutting off the main transport link to the south-west of England. Last night one town councillor warned of a public health catastrophe if flooding hits Bridgwater – a major Somerset town with a population of 35,000.
He said: ‘There is a genuine concern that Bridgwater could flood. The waters in the flooded village are already contaminated by cess pits and flooding in the town will block the public sewerage system. There is a large amount of Bridgwater that is below sea level – about 25 or 30 per cent of the properties.’
Royal Marine commandos also joined Environment Agency staff as they worked to set up hasty flood defences on the outskirts of the town. Caterpillar track diggers were drafted in to build an earth dam in the outlying village of Huntworth to hold back the swollen River Parrett.
Trenches were dug in the fields between the river and the Bridgwater and Taunton canal to build the makeshift barrier.
The Environment Agency last night tried to play down the consequences of flood waters reaching Bridgwater, saying it was working on a number of ‘short term, emergency options’ to maximise the amount of water that can be pumped away from the area as quickly as possible.
‘This includes a temporary earth flood bank at Huntworth, which is being built as a precaution to protect properties on the outskirts of Bridgwater,’ said a spokesman.
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