There are many lessons to be learned from how England's worst flooding for 60 years has been handled by emergency services this week. There have been no deaths and much heroic work kept water and power plants working and rescued thousands of trapped people. Research published yesterday establishes a link between human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and changing rainfall patterns in north-western Europe. While there is no direct link between global warming and particular spells of wet weather, long-term trends are likely to make them more common. What happened this week in western England could occur here as well.
Preparedness for such disasters is stimulated by an awareness of how vulnerable we are to them. A number of parallels can be drawn between the experience of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire this week and the potential impact of heavy flooding in Waterford, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Dublin or Wicklow. Some 100mm of rainfall hit parts of these English counties on Friday last and continued for three days, overwhelming the absorption capacity of the Ouse, Thames, Severn and Avon rivers and their flood plains. The flooding was exacerbated by the growth of impermeable built surfaces throughout the region, affecting drainage systems and flood barriers. If events like these are to occur every 10 to 20 years rather than every one or two centuries, as the research indicates could happen over the next 100 years, a huge infrastructural investment programme will be called for to reinforce defences conceived and built in a different era.
In his comments on the disaster prime minister Gordon Brown acknowledged the link between it and climate change. "We are going to have to look at drainage, surface water, as well as river water . . . We will have to invest in coastal defences, flood defences and, of course, drainage infrastructure". Planning for such investment must be based on establishing closer links between broad changes in rainfall patterns and especially vulnerable localities.
These lessons apply just as much in Ireland as in the UK. Similar pressure on rivers, flood plains and drainage systems has arisen from the construction and housing booms in both countries. And nature does not respect political - or insular - boundaries so as to justify Irish complacency in the face of such threats.
Fragmented organisation of public and utility authorities in preparing for flood disasters has been identified as one of the principal problems in western England this week. This could usefully be reviewed here as well. It makes sense in the light of this week's events in western England to make sure the National Development Plan is reappraised to cover long-term planning for flooding disasters as well as other environmental hazards. If weather patterns in our region are shifting qualitatively as suggested by this latest research we should anticipate those changes, not just react to them.