Cumbria Flooding 2015

Cumbria and Lancashire Floods, December 2015 – Case Study

In early December 2015 Cumbria was hit by mass flooding as a result of Storm Desmond, which resulted in the environmental agency issuing 17 severe weather warnings in North and East Cumbria, meaning he weather could pose a danger to life. The large amount of rainfall (40mm in a few hours) resulted in Glenridding Beck, River Kent and River Eden bursting their banks. Many others are still expected to follow suit such as the River Tees.  The roads and drainage couldn’t handle that intensity of rainfall and that's why flash flooding occurred.

Effects:

·         1m high water

·         50 miles of road diversions sue to closed roads.

·         In a worse-case scenario there could be a total of 6455 homes affected.

·         In Carlisle, police estimated up to 3500 homes had been flooded

·         5200 homes damaged in the first day – many more followed.

·         In North-West England the estimated cost to damage was £500 million.

·         45000 homes lost power

·         1000 homes without power in Cumbria for the first 4 days.

·         Thousands of people were made temporarily homeless from water damage.

·         Shops and businesses damaged.

·         Carlisle was divided for a significant amount of days following, awaiting inspection by divers – 130 other bridges were still awaiting immediate inspection in the week after the weekend of the first rounds of floods.

·         Three bridges collapsed – Pooley Bridge in Ullswater,…