Forth Floods

G'day cobber

Marcia  wellies her way through

Not the Yangtze just the River Forth in spate 

Lochside residence

November is the month of floods and these last few weeks the road has been closed three times.  As always there is a huddle of cars parked outside the house waiting for the waters to recede before they can get through to Stirling or Glasgow.  We may be 30 miles away from the sea but the river is still influenced by the tide and the waters back up two or three hours after high tide in the estuary of the Forth. When working I was faced with returning home to a flood at least a couple of times a year.  

About fifteen years ago I arrived home with a friend who had just sold his house and was staying with us for a few days, the flood waters were thigh-deep and we simply took off our shoes, rolled up our suit trousers and walked through with briefcases held high above the waters. A neighbour described it as the photo of the year but she did not have a camera handy. It was different today, I decided to collect a newspaper or if truth be told I fancied a paddle. Another neighbour was amused by me wading through the flood for a newspaper and asked me to pose knee-deep in the flood with one leg and running shoe out of the water in ministry of silly walks style; she publishes a daily photo so who knows where it will turn up.

When I returned home three cars had failed to get through and had been pushed out of the flooded section of the road, their engines damaged by the water.  It used to be possible to get through by driving on the pavement which is 6 or 7cm higher than the road surface but traffic calming bollards put paid to that, they were placed near the low point of the road.  I passed several frogs swimming for their life and two fish swam past me exploring their new domain. The current was quite strong and may hopefully one day sweep away the bollards. 

I went in to dry off and then went out again to take some photos, and spotted an acquaintance wading through the floods looking as though he was on his holidays.  He was on the way home from Australia and had travelled 10,000 miles in 36 hours only to be thwarted a mile from home by the River Forth which looked more like the Yangtze; I was happy to give him a lift up the road once he had crossed the deep section.  Later our house became a restroom for the drivers who were waiting for the motoring organisations to rescue their cars outside the house.

Why flood protection measures have not been implemented constantly frustrates me; it requires a retaining wall, no more than a metre in height and stretching for up to 200 metres. Dozens of cars/vans would be saved, the school could be open for two or three days extra each year, many houses and shops would be spared their largely ineffective sandbag defences and far fewer working days would be lost.  By any cost-benefit analysis, it would be a cut-and-dried case.  Instead, it has become caught up in the indeterminable evaluation of priorities set by the Sottish Government based upon hydrologists modelling the floods and then consultants producing an engineering solution that is beyond the declining capital programme of the Council.  If it was a farm track a JCB would sort out the problem in a couple of days as I have seen on dozens of occasions when walking in all parts of the highlands.  It would also mean that the waters of the scenic temporary loch that appears across the road could be retained in the field instead of damaging the roads, the drains, cables, some houses and writing off perfectly good vehicles. Whatever happened to intermediate technology?