Mind the floor … still repairing after the floods. Walmgate, May 2016

Earlier this month I headed up Walmgate, to take photos of the building featured on the previous page. I took a few more on the way there, including the photo above of a rather handsome doorway. A handwritten sign warned of an uneven floor, and building materials were visible through the glass.

It’s more than four months since parts of Walmgate and Fossgate were flooded by the overflowing Foss. Generally it’s all cleaned up. But some of the shops and restaurants aren’t quite there yet, months on. I was struck by the signs in the windows, and took photos of the ones I noticed.

Red Cross shop, Walmgate, 2 May 2016

Walmgate, Cats Protection League charity shop, 2 May 2016

Loch Fyne restaurant, by Foss Bridge, 2 May 2016

Blue Bicycle restaurant, Fossgate, 2 May 2016

Yesterday an independent report into the failure of the Foss Barrier was made available. The report (PDF) and a summary can be found on this link. It contains phrases like ‘ the event has identified a lack of resilience in the asset’s performance.’

The photos here are small reminders of the impact of this asset failure.

One of the frustrating things, as a local person, was seeing how the situation was presented in the media, as if the whole city was underwater. This has obvious effects on tourism — which of course the city relies on. Then of course the other side to that is the urgent need, later, to promote the ‘open for business’ message, as things get back to normal.

And of course things mainly are back to normal. Except for some homes and businesses they’re not anywhere near that yet. And a cluster of buildings in part of Walmgate and alongside Foss Bridge still have ground floors full of building materials stacked between recently replastered walls.

Inside, also visible through the windows of these still-closed premises, the new plug sockets, this time placed much higher up the walls, in case it happens again. Let’s hope it doesn’t.

Repairing a Walmgate shop after the floods

More information

On this site: see all pages tagged floods2015

I don’t normally advertise events, but I notice that there’s a charity show taking place on 16 May at the Grand Opera House, with proceeds going to The York Disaster Fund managed by Two Ridings Community Foundation. More information here.

There’s a public exhibition on Friday 20 May and Saturday 21 May at Hotel 53 in Piccadilly, York where residents can find out more about the work the Environment Agency is planning for York.

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Clifton Green and the Bur Dike, 1852 map

Though this side of town (away from the Foss) stayed mainly dry in the recent floods, there were sudden surprising amounts of water in a few places.

On Boxing Day, photos on Twitter alerted me to the fact that Water Lane in Clifton was in one section true to its name, and covered in water. I went up there to have a look.

A large lake had appeared at the lower point of the road, at the junction with Kingsway.

Flooding on Water Lane, Clifton, 26 Dec 2015

Flooding at Water Lane/Kingsway junction, Clifton, 26 Dec 2015

This is nowhere near the river, so clearly this isn’t the river bursting its banks kind of flooding. It might have been assumed that this was the result of heavy rain, and perhaps blocked/silted-up street drains (a fairly common problem in many suburban areas).

After standing there a while it became clear that the water’s surface was in places bubbling up, presumably from manhole covers in the road. Suggesting that this water hadn’t come down from the sky but mainly up from the ground.

I think what we were seeing here was the bubbling up of the Burdyke. (Or ‘Bur Dike’, as it’s called on the 1852 map above.)

This road is one of the old routes, and clearly has one of those typical old names, the ‘call it what it is’ type of name, like the many Church Lanes leading to churches. The map of 1852 shows the Burdyke (Bur Dike) running alongside Water Lane, which presumably often flooded back then. And on this day late in 2015 it was again. This isn’t uncommon, apparently.

It was impassable near to the junction at Clifton Green by the time I got up there, but I wanted to see what was happening at the Green, so it was necessary to backtrack (and approach it via the forbiddingly named ‘Dead Man’s Alley’).

The water covered a large area of Clifton Green, and some of the road areas alongside.

Clifton Green, with floodwater (and redundant water trough) 26 Dec 2015

This used to happen a lot, and appears to have been much worse in the 1892 floods.

Flooding on Clifton Green, 1892. (Photo: Explore York Images and Archives)

There are a couple of short stretches of the Burdyke still visible upstream at Clifton Backies. (This photo was taken today, not during the floods last week.)

Burdyke, Clifton Backies, 5 Jan 2016

The rest of this watercourse, heading downstream, is culverted (piped in). But apparently it still follows the same course as it used to, heading towards the Ouse via Water Lane and then Clifton Green, and then under a centuries-old pathway from the Green (which is still a snicket), bending its way behind back gardens and under roads. Near the end of Westminster Road it takes a turn towards the river.

The flood alerts on Boxing Day had mentioned the Burdyke pumping station. I get the impression that the Burdyke pumping station isn’t a well-known structure. The pumps are apparently under the end of the floodbank behind St Peter’s, at the point where the path crosses from the river to the end of Westminster Road. At this point there’s a small brick shed behind the flood bank, and a concrete structure embedded into it.

Burdyke Pumping Station, Clifton, 5 Jan 2016

I’m sure I remember standing on the floodbank here during the floods of 2000 and hearing the noise from within, of the pumps, presumably, full-on and making quite a racket. Similarly in 2012, as mentioned on an earlier page.

On Boxing Day this year, after seeing the water on Water Lane and Clifton Green I followed part of the route of the buried Burdyke, towards the river, thinking I’d stand on the floodbank and from there get a better view on things, a perspective on how bad it was, having stood/walked there so many times before.

On the way, in this low-lying area on the old pathway/snicket by the school grounds, more evidence of what seemed to be the Burdyke bubbling up, near the end of Westminster Road.

Flooding near Westminster Rd, 26 Dec 2015

Then heading for the river, to survey the scene, the route became impassable in ordinary walking boots and would have needed wellies. I got as far as the brick building which is part of the pumping station for the Burdyke, but couldn’t get onto the floodbank beyond it.

It all seemed fairly quiet down there, with a few people on the floodbank itself, standing looking at the water. I’d thought I’d be able to hear the pumps doing their thing, but perhaps, I thought, I wasn’t close enough.

Later, reading comments on the Press website, I noticed a reader had mentioned that they thought those pumps at the Burdyke weren’t working. That they’d gone down to the riverside, (presumably via a different route or wearing wellies) and stood on the bank above the pumps, and thought that it all seemed rather quiet.

It could be that the Environment Agency have invested in extremely quiet pumps. Or that the person who commented on this online was mistaken. Or that the pumps had been turned off for some technical reason none of us understand. Or that they’d failed. In any case, as far as I’m aware the flooding of the Burdyke area doesn’t cause any flooding of homes, it just seems to produce a temporary lake for Clifton and inconvenience motorists.

The Clifton lake seemed to disappear very quickly, and by around midday the following day there wasn’t much of it left on Clifton Green. These two photos illustrate the change from one day to the next:

Clifton Green flooded, 2.21pm, 26 Dec 2015

Clifton Green after flooding, 12.30pm, 27 Dec 2015

Which is quite impressive really isn’t it. There was a bit of water left on the Green the day after (see the first photo on this page), but not much. I assume this was connected to the Burdyke and its pumps? Were the pumps ‘overwhelmed’ (a word I think I’ve seen in connection with the Foss barrier pumps) and then recovered themselves and resumed pumping, and that’s why all this water disappeared again surprisingly quickly? Did the emergency services come along in the night and manually pump the floodwater away? Does anyone know?

I didn’t like to ask before now, as there have been more important things going on with the Foss at the other side of town. But it’s all linked, all these watercourses heading for the Ouse.

There may be big obvious rivers through the city, but there are also several rather important and ancient watercourses, and the Burdyke is one of them. The buried Burdyke, in times of over-capacity, seems to flood up and out to remind us of what the landscape was like in centuries past – just as the Foss did recently, reclaiming the old ‘King’s Fishpool’. We perhaps need more knowledge and understanding of our becks and dykes, the ‘ordinary watercourses’, as they’re called in the flood strategy documents. (Which contain more information on our becks and the Burdyke, should you be interested. The relevant links can be found on this page.)

I could go on, but I fear I’ve already overwhelmed readers with a flood of information. Thanks for reading. Comments and local insights (and expert insights from further afield) are welcome, as always. If any of the above is factually inaccurate, it’s not for want of trying. The information on the Burdyke and its pumping station is sparse and until recently it seemed fairly impossible to find any information on it at all.

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As we all know, central to the recent flooding is the failure of the Foss barrier. After I wrote yesterday’s page (intended as one of several on the subject), this morning brought an announcement from the government that extra funding would be made available including £10m reserved to improve the Foss Barrier.

It would seem that the need for extra investment into the flood defences has been recognised for some time. A Press report from more than a year ago, published to coincide with the ‘long-awaited draft Flood Risk Management strategy’, said:

Proposed spending includes an estimated £2 million on an upgrade of the Foss Barrier and pumping station, which protects thousands of properties alongside the River Foss by preventing floodwaters from backing up the river from the Ouse. Another £3.5 million is needed for an appraisal and replacement of the Burdyke and Holgate pumping station, £1.5 million for the restoration of the Clifton Ings barrier bank and £5 million on developing and delivering a range of measures to reduce the impact of flooding in unprotected areas of York.

– Millions needed to upgrade York’s flood defences 2 September 2014, York Press

So now, after the dirty deluge has caused so much distress to so many people, some funding is promised. A bit late perhaps, for those whose homes and businesses flooded?

And after all the speculation, the promise of funding would seem to confirm the widely-held suspicion that a lack of funding caused the problems with the Foss barrier?

Investigations and reports into the recent floods are promised by the relevant authorities. There have been many reports since the 2000 floods. Have they made any difference?

I’ve read a lot of online comments in recent days, and there seems to be a desire to find someone or something to blame.

I don’t think any of us would like to be in the position of having to decide whether to leave an apparently unreliably-pumped flood barrier open or closed, which seems to have been a case of having to decide on the least worst option.

I’ve seen suggestions that somehow the homes and businesses around the Foss were ‘sacrificed’ to protect the Ouse-side properties. And also some rather hard-to-fathom theories and speculations.

So perhaps today’s announcement of funding is an admission that the city’s flood-defending infrastructure has got a bit old and knackered and needs some maintenance.

This recent tweet from the Met Office seems to point to the other culprit:

This increased rainfall, and increase in rainfall rushing through York’s rivers, seems to be the ‘new normal’ we’ll have to learn to accept. I’m sure many of us have been reading comments and articles not only about the York floods and the Foss barrier but about the wider issues. With some saying dredging is the answer, and others saying that’s not the case, and others focusing on the way the farmland above us is managed.

Comments welcome, as always. More to follow, as I wade through a flood of recently-read reports.

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The Foss Barrier in summer 2007

I think we all know what this is. It’s the Foss barrier. Pictured here in 2007, when it was quietly doing its job whenever it was needed, before it became famous/notorious for its failure, at the end of December 2015.

I suspect that most of us took it for granted. I did.

I managed to take a photo, seven years ago, when down this way taking lots of other photos of things that at the time seemed more photogenic/interesting/important.

But in recent days it has become painfully obvious just how crucial it is, this structure near the confluence of the Ouse and the Foss. Its failure meant the flooding of so many homes and businesses, in a city where traditionally (in recent decades anyway) attention seemed to focus on the Ouse, the city’s main river.

The photos of the floods in recent days were shocking, but reminiscent of images in a gallery of photos on the local Press website, taken during the floods of 1982, before the barrier was erected. I’ve borrowed a few as it doesn’t seem possible to link to them individually, and I wanted to highlight certain streets, which have flooded this year again. The full gallery (and larger versions of these) can be viewed on the Press website.

Flooded Foss Bank, 1982 (Photo: York Press)

In 1982, and presumably in all the other major floods before that, Foss-side streets like Walmgate, Fishergate, Foss Bank and Foss Islands flooded.

Flooded Walmgate, 1982 (Photo: York Press)

Flooded Fishergate, 1982 (Photo: York Press)

Flooded Foss Islands Road, 1982 (Photo: York Press)

As did Marygate, North Street, Tanner’s Moat up to Rougier Street – though these streets, alongside the Ouse, are now protected by flood defences in the form of walls with gates, closed during floods.

Could the same be done on the Foss? Walls with floodgates? I’m thinking that the answer is probably no. It’s a slower, more meandering kind of thing, the Foss. Usually so small and slow that it’s forgotten about. Tourism organisations seem to forget about it entirely, and focus on the Ouse, ‘the city’s river’. The Foss has always been off the radar, rural-looking into industrial. In living memory it weaved its way into town through the gasworks on either side of its banks, past industrial buildings on Foss Islands and in the Hungate area, towards its confluence with the Ouse. Now it passes its way through more residential properties, many built in the last decade, off Huntington Road and in the Hungate area.

Looking at aerial photos of the floods in the city end of Huntington Road the most striking thing was the number of cars parked near the new residential developments recently constructed in the bend of the Foss where ten years ago I remember taking photos of rather nondescript light industrial units. The people who live here now, in the homes built on this bend in the Foss, did they know what might happen? Were their new homes built with flood protection measures in mind? Some of the blocks have garages at ground level, some don’t. I can also see from the recent aerial views of the floods that a lot of cars parked outside the flats have been half submerged by the floods, as if the residents were taken completely by surprise.

The Victorian terraced houses near them, also on the Foss side of Huntington Road, will have survived many floods. I remember visiting one in the mid-90s, and the owner talking about the flooding of his garden in the past. Gardens can cope with flood events. The cars parked by the modern flats nearby, and the contents of the houses in the area, clearly that’s a different thing.

And all that was dependent on the Foss barrier?

The Foss used to flood all the time, just as the Ouse did, but we’ve built a lot of new residential property right next to it, and this continues, in the Hungate area. As if it’s all safe now. Presumably all these buildings have been designed to cope with flood water in the lower parts, without that leaving an expensive trail of useless damaged valuable things behind? Or is it all based on trusting the Foss barrier?

Looks that way. Maybe time for a rethink then. It was state of the art at the time it was built, I guess, but it seems ludicrous how much trust we’ve put in that one structure to save all the homes and businesses round the Foss, as its failure sent the areas around it back to the 80s, or to even earlier, medieval times, as the old river found its level like the interventions never happened. A ‘strong brown god’, just like the Ouse.

Ouse waters just below a hand-carved marker apparently indicating the 1982 flood level, by Lendal Bridge

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget.

— T S Eliot

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I know many people will want to help those affected by the floods in York. After the immediate crisis help will be needed for some time.

The city council has a page with information on how to help, including how to donate online: https://www.york.gov.uk/flood

I’ll add to this page things I’ve picked up from Twitter – if you’d like to add anything please add a comment below or contact me via Twitter  or the contact form. Just a couple to begin with. Can you help?

Red Cross charity shop on Walmgate needs donations to restock the shop, from next week:

British Red Cross charity shop on Walmgate in York had to skip all their goods. They want new donations from Monday! pic.twitter.com/BbdMRJqxAv

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) December 31, 2015

The RSPCA home on Landing Lane in York (near Clifton Bridge) needs donations of food and bedding:

#RSPCA in #York are in need of cat & dog food & old bedding, Please contact @RSPCAYORK for details. #Selby #Flood https://t.co/QbqHP61gMd — Selby Flood Info (@SelbyFloodInfo) December 31, 2015

The post York floods 2015: assistance required appeared first on York Stories.

By Lendal Tower, 27 Dec 2015

A few further thoughts about different perspectives on the floods.

As recorded on an earlier page, it all looked normal in large areas of the city and its suburbs, even though it was a different story in other areas. But, as I feared, news reports on the situation meant I had worried relatives fearing the whole city was underwater.

Presumably because of that same reporting there are people on Twitter who don’t live in York having a go at Rachael Maskell MP (York Central) and city council leader Chris Steward for stressing that the city is ‘open for business’. Though Rachael Maskell and Chris Steward have been out there dealing with the situation on the ground the Twitter commentators from far afield seem convinced they know better what is happening in the city – that it’s all underwater, etc – apparently from reading media reports.

I’ve been wondering how I might have seen the situation if I’d relied on social media and the internet in general rather than living here and walking about.

To begin with, my main information on the worsening situation with York’s rivers came via Twitter. On Boxing Day I noticed striking images of floodwater on Huntington Road. It is low-lying in that particular area, and is right next to the Foss, and as I recall has flooded quite often. I tried to get more information, then went for a wander up there to have a look.

As the evening wore on, seeing comments and photos on Twitter, I became more concerned. ‘How bad is it?’ I kept wondering. Previous experience made me cautious about taking the immediate social media reaction as a true representation. Because the nature of it means people are sending out their immediate worries/impressions/anger/panic, and I’m not very good with that sort of thing, and really wanted to get some context. And tried to get that, from locals in the affected areas. And kept thinking ‘How bad is it?’

There were people saying that they’d ‘never seen it this bad’, and I found myself going to check their profile details and photos to see if I could gauge how old they might be, or how long they might have been here – because ‘never seen it this bad’ wouldn’t be so significant if they, for example, were a student, maybe here quite recently, in recent years. If someone in their 80s says they’ve ‘never seen it this bad’ then clearly that’s more worrying.

‘How bad is it?’ I thought more and more as more and more people seemed really worried. I’ve lived here a long time, and seen many floods, and read a lot about earlier floods, seen a lot of photos of earlier floods. I handled the worry and concern by leaning on reassuring historical perspective. And hoped that the true picture would become clearer, and be properly and responsibly reported.

But of course news doesn’t work like that. News is about dramatic things, about reporting it as it happens, and focusing on the catastrophe, not the context.

So certain language is used, and photos are framed in a particular way, and all of it presents a dramatic picture of the crisis, but misses out the context and doesn’t care about the bigger picture. Which means people worry, and panic.

The way photos are framed is important, and the way they’re presented. At one point, looking at photos on Twitter, I thought that the Groves area (between Huntington Road and Haxby Road) was flooded. (It’s on higher ground than Huntington Road itself, which is right next to the Foss.) Another photo and associated comments suggested that the flood defences at the edge of the Marygate car park had failed and that it was covered in floodwater. It wasn’t, it was dry, with the water held back by the walls and gates just as usual.

But when I was down there in the Marygate area I took some photos. They perhaps illustrate the different ways of framing, and how images of the same thing can give different impressions from slightly different angles.

I took these images seconds apart, standing by the crucial flood wall and gate by Scarborough Bridge. The first shows the flood water of the Ouse dramatically high, as if about to overwhelm the defences, as if it’s at the same level.

Flood defences by Scarborough Bridge, holding back the Ouse (view 1 of 2)

I then moved to the side of where I’d been standing, and held my camera over the same stretch of wall (and river) and pointed the camera towards the back of that wall.

Flood defences near Scarborough Bridge, holding back the Ouse (2 of 2)

And as you can see, it’s some way off overtopping the defences. Far more so than the first image suggests.

If I’d been a news provider I guess I would have gone for the first photo. But I’m not, so I used the second one.

Why does it matter? Because it’s about providing clear and balanced information, even in times of crisis. Because city centre businesses probably can’t afford to lose a lot of customers who would have been coming in to town but have been scared away by thinking that the whole city is submerged, or that all the main roads in are impassable. Because my relatives were worried, so presumably you, dear readers, found similar worry. And I think we’ve all got enough to worry about already without misinformation or skewed reporting making it worse.

This city floods so often, to varying degrees. It seems that we’re still struggling to present that accurately and in a balanced way to the outside world, and to local residents.

We’re now in the aftermath (I hope, hoping that recent rains won’t have raised the levels high again) and we’re back in that usual thing of people arguing over whether York is ‘open for business’ or not. Part of it never closed for business, as I hope I demonstrated on my Sunday walk.

Yet trusted authorities started telling people not to come into town. It seems that they meant ‘don’t try to drive into the city as some major routes are flooded’. But other major routes weren’t, and in any case many of us were walking (or cycling).

This problem is going to keep happening, York will keep flooding, nothing can stop that, and every time there will be more and more people posting photos and commenting – a flood of information following the flood itself. And it will confuse people, as it has this time.

How can we better manage the flood of information, and make it accurate and helpful? How can we support the city better, the traders who are still trading, the residents who need to know that their bus route will take them into town to shop at those shops and visit the restaurants? I hope it will evolve, become more balanced and properly represent the situation at the crucial times, because although these floodwaters will recede, it’s only a matter of time before the next flood, isn’t it.

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