ninme

The Times - Bad building, not heavy rain, made these houses flood
If we persist in covering land with concrete and tarmac, we must expect more devastated homes, by Ross Clark

Headline writers have been thumbing their copies of Roget’s Thesaurus over the weekend for words relating to “deluge” and “tempest”. But what they should have written, was “homes flooded on slightly damp day, thanks to foolishly designed housing estates”.

My first reaction on seeing the pictures of people knee-deep in their living rooms was: what incredible rainfall there must have been. But when I looked up the figures, I was shocked by how little rain fell over the country on Friday and Saturday. The wettest place in Britain, Liscombe, Devon, received 2.04ins in 24 hours - a trickle compared with the 7ins that fell on Worcestershire in a few hours in June 2007.

It was poor Mrs Pritchard, of Lydney, Gloucestershire, who gave the game away as she mopped up her home, flooded for the third time in 15 months. She had never had a problem in 23 years, she said, until a new housing estate was built nearby.

Yes!