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2 Impacts of flooding in August 2004
Information on flooding or severe weather is held by a
number of organisations and in a number of locations. Our
study collected formal reports and assessed news reportage
to provide a picture of the impact of flooding in
August.
2.1 Formal reporting
A statutory means for the formal collection of flooding
data under the Flood Prevention and Land Drainage
(Scotland) Act 1997 is through the biennial reports
published by Local Authorities and a review of these
biennial flood reports was reported to the
SEPA Conference on the 30th of September
2004 by Professor Alan Werritty
5. Scottish Executive asked the councils for information
on flooding in their area and received a summary of
information. This is kept in a paper file by Scottish
Executive. Information is received in the biennial reports
which vary substantially in format and content. Some are
published documents, some web pages and some short paper
reports.
The biennial reports can be of limited use in assessment
of severe flood events as they only produced every two
years. There can therefore be some delay in collation of
flood data for an immediate assessment of a flood's impact.
When severe weather events take place the
SE seeks 'live' information from Local
Authorities for Ministerial briefing and this information
is collated in a file. It is assumed that this is then also
used in the biennial reports.
2.2 Press coverage
This assessment of incidents of flooding involved a
search through internet resources including local and
national news and newspaper websites,
SEPA flood warning website and news and
through data collected by Scottish Executive during the
period. This data search identified two distinct events,
one in early August (9 to 13 August) and the second later
on in August (18 to 22 August), a full list of flooding
incidents found during this search are detailed in Appendix
A and are shown in Figure 2-1 overleaf. Landslides were
prevalent during both of the periods, receiving most press
coverage was the landslide blocking the A9 on the 12 of
August and two landslides blocking the A85 at Glen
Ogle.
Table 2-1: Glen Ogle
landslip after repairs pictured in early September
2004
Landslip A82 from old railway from north west
Landslip on A82 from old railway from south west showing
new gabions
The two floods had distinct distributions (Figure 2-1).
Flood reports in early August were over higher areas either
side of the central belt, whereas later in August the
events were predominantly in the north east apart from the
landslides in Glen Ogle.
During our assessment of areas flooding there was
substantial reportage of roads flooding. Of note is that in
the two areas where a substantial number of houses were
flooded to depth there was little or no news coverage. The
two sites were at Menstrie, a Clackmannanshire hillfoots
settlement at the foot of the Ochils, where 30 properties
flooded to depths of nearly 0.5 m, and at Pebbles on the
River Tweed, where properties within an existing scheme
flooded to a depth of between 0.3 and 0.6 m. At Menstrie 4
houses were flooded the day after they had been handed over
by a developer and this could be considered to be
reasonably newsworthy.
Table 2-2 : Location of
flooding in Menstrie
Floodwater passed along Burnside Road flooding houses on
the left
Bridge damaged in flood, note a footbridge upstream was
washed down onto this bridge
Following collation of the flood incident data the
following catchments were designated as target catchments
in terms of
SEPA hydrometric data analysis to
determine the severity of the event.
- The Don (Aberdeenshire)
- The Tweed (Borders)
- The Tay (Perthshire)
- The Teith (Stirlingshire)
The greatest press coverage of flooding incidents and
landslides occurred in the upland Tay and Teith catchments,
but unfortunately due to time constraints prevailing on
this project data was only received for the for the Don and
Tweed catchments and one 15 minute instantaneous rain gauge
close to the Teith catchment, hence data analyses during
this study can only be based on the Don and Tweed
catchments.
Figure 2-1: Instances of
Flooding Scotland August 2004
2.3
SEPA
SEPA maintain the hydrometric network
and issue flood warnings as floodline and they are also
responsible for producing the new flood maps for Scotland
driven by Scottish Planning Policy 7
6 (
SPP7).
SEPA have collated a number of
historical flood maps and maintain this as a
GIS dataset. Occasionally flood outlines
and levels are surveyed and for the January 2005 event in
some of the areas affected in August 2004 is being
collected to increase the understanding of flooding. This
will include flood levels on the Tweed through Peebles but
not levels on the Burn that caused substantial localised
flooding. Most of the flood outlines are on larger
catchments and tend not to be on smaller urban
catchments.
2.4 Scottish Water
Scottish Water maintains a database or register of
flooding and logs calls made to its customer service line.
Scottish water reported over 3000 calls in August over a
normal monthly total of 500. Twice as many "incident
alerts" as in any other month have also been recorded
7. This information would contribute substantially to
understanding flooding particularly in urban areas.
Scottish Water is predominantly focused on flooding from
its own sewer network. Scottish Water is currently
undertaking a detailed analysis of the flood event and a
report is due in March 2005. This report is a comparison of
phone logs and reports with their flooding register and
will produce a measle map (incident plan with locations
similar to Figure 2-1). This information will be a valuable
resource in determining flooding areas.
2.5 Fire Service
Tayside Fire Brigades log for both events in August
revealed there were a number of incidents across Tayside,
including substantial flooding in Dundee, Bankfoot,
landslides on the A9 and other flooding across the whole
region in 2 events on the 11 & 16 August
8. The Fire service logs have valuable information on
location but would require investigating beyond the scope
of this work to ascertain the flooding details.
2.6 Observational
Substantial attention and resources was focused on the
landslides on the A85, on the eastern slopes of the Glen
Ogle Valley. There was also risk to local property on
Lochearnhead with material blocking the bridge on the A85
at Auchraw, and threatening local houses. There were also a
number of landslides on the western side of the valley
which blocked and closed the new Sustrans National cycle
route. The route was still being repaired in September
2004, a month after the event.
2.7 Insurers
No insurers were approached as part of this study. The
insurance industry does hold information on households and
businesses insured at the time of flooding. In addition at
least one insurance company had its own flood map of parts
of Scotland at the time of flooding and is currently
extending this cover for the rest of Scotland.
2.8
RECAP Flooding Forum November
Tayside
The
RECAP flooding Forum Meeting Monday 29
November 2004, Council Chambers Perth and Kinross Council
Perth, brought together interested parties who played an
active role in the flooding incidents in August, and
presentations were made by the following services:-
- Tayside Police
- Tayside Fire Brigade
- Angus Council
- Dundee City Council
- Perth Council
- Scottish Executive (
RNM) and
BEAR
- Scottish Water
Each party was able to clearly state their own
interpretation of their role. All referred to a difficulty
in communication and the co-ordination. All parties
identified gaps in responsibility for flooding and that
there was no body that had overall responsibility for
handling the situation which arises in an extreme weather
event and where widespread flooding is recorded.
2.9 Agricultural impacts
The saturated soils and wet conditions delayed
harvesting and damaged crops in some areas, Figure 2-2
below shows flattened grass and sediment deposition on
pasture in Glen Ogle down valley from the landslides (see
Section 2.2). Despite searches made through the
NFU Scotland web news archive
9 there was no apparent readily available record or
sources of primary/ secondary data which would enable the
agricultural inputs to be quantified geographically and
quantified financially were found.
Agricultural statistics are collated by Scottish
Executive where a census is undertaken each June; therefore
in the case of this study no information is available as to
the output from such a census on agricultural output or
harvested crops until the June 2005 census.
Figure 2-2: Pasture showing
flattened grass and sediment deposition
2.10 Chronology of British Flood
Events
The British Hydrological Society maintains a website
10 of hydrological events with data being held at the
University of Dundee. This database was launched in July
1998, with the ultimate aim of bringing together all
hydrological circumstances including flooding, drought and
heavy rainfall.
This is an extremely useful tool and all hydrological
users (from consultants, local authorities, government
through to the public are encouraged to maintain input into
the database.
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