Storm Babet

Five Sisters, Glen Shiel

I had arranged to go north for a few days before Storm Babet was predicted. The Met Office put out a rare red warning for the east of Scotland from Perth to Aberdeen. It would be close and my daughter and grandchildren were flying to Inverness to join me. They were worried because they had heard that the Scottish Government were urging people not to travel. In my most optimistic manner, I reassured them it would be ok where we were going although they might get some heavy rain in Inverness.

I watched the Scottish Government Depute First Minister announce the arrangements to cope with the emergency, stressing the roles of the Police, Fire and Rescue, SEPA and Transport Scotland. The Scottish Government operate from the Resilience Centre in Edinburgh and they have always assumed that they are the main player in emergencies and that the above centralised organisations are the key actors. The reality is that flooding emergencies are very localised and it is the councils that are the first responders. They have the local intelligence that is crucial to coping with emergencies. They have to advise households and businesses to evacuate, set up rest centres, provide sandbags, provide 24/7 support and carry out road closures which are almost always local roads, not trunk roads,. 

The Resilience Centre obtains updates on what is happening on the ground drawing information from the councils as well as the police but this is usually retrospective whereas the local council emergency teams are operating in real-time. In 14 years of operating such a team, I can never recall any pertinent instructions or advice arriving from the Scottish Government although resources were made available for serious incidents and payments made after the event. Mutual aid was usually arranged by the good network of support that existed between councils, this was particularly the case with major incidents such as Dunblane and the Foot and Mouth outbreak in Dumfries and Galloway.

With all this in mind, I checked the Met Office forecasts for my route north and council websites for road closures before deciding to travel as planned. I had established that Storm Babet was unlikely to have any impact on my journey. Flooding and extreme weather are after all very localised.

It rained on the journey to Fort William but traffic was lighter than usual probably as a result of the Scottish Government urging people not to travel., From Fort William to Kyle of Lochalsh it was mainly sunny with a strong wind that made the trees shed their leaves and the late season Winnebagos sway a bit on the road. I was at my destination ahead of schedule. After unpacking, I watched the evening news and the impact of Storm Babet on parts of Angus. It had been a local tragedy, 400 people had been evacuated, three people had died from the South Esk river bursting its banks and trees falling in the wind. Rest centres were operating, local roads staff were closing roads and with Fire and Rescue helping frail residents. The Scottish Government was meanwhile treading water as it provided a commentatory on recent events.

The Resilience Centre was issuing news statements that had already been covered by local radio, council websites and User-generated content (USG). I became aware of the significance of the latter when I had a couple of hundred hits on an eight-year-old post, Storm Frank-visits-Aberfoyle following flooding there a couple of weeks ago. The same had happened earlier this year when some climbers were killed on Aonach Eagach Ridge and my posts on the climb went ballistic.  It is more evidence why the centre cannot hold. The genius of social media and artificial intelligence is that they draw on the knowledge of people at the scene, they deal in local detail and operate in real-time. These are the things that matter to those subjected to emergency events. 

Over the sea to Skye

Applecross Hills