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Travel chaos as storms leave thousands stranded
Last updated at 23:22pm on 21.07.07• Rail companies cancel train services
• Floods cause gridlock on the M5
• Police phone lines down
• Drivers forced to abandon cars
Motorists have taken desperate measures after being stranded by extreme weather which saw some areas deluged with around three times the amount of rain normally expected for the whole of July in just over a day.
Emergency services dealt with thousands of calls as hundreds of drivers were stranded overnight, while more than 100 people had to be airlifted to safety.
The worst hit area is the M5 around Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The major flood rescue operation also saw lifeboat crews rescue holidaymakers stranded on top of their caravans.
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Car and trucks come to a halt on the M5. Many spent the night in their cars
Midday, London: Darkness shrouds the capital and cars, taxis and buses battle through torrential rain during one of a series of dramatic cloudbursts which brought death, flooding and travel chaos for the second time in a month yesterday
Close shave: A driver was rescued from his car which was almost totally submerged in 6ft of floodwater in Gloucester by a colleague who stripped off his shirt and hauled him out through the sunroof. The shaken pair then swam to safety
RAF rescue opearations are taking place across the south west of England including in Gloucestershire, Evesham, and Tewkesbury.
The Environment Agency has issued 82 flood warnings with the worst hit areas being Stratford Upoon Avon, Evesham, and Ascot under Wynchwood.
Baroness Young, chief executive of the Environment Agency said: "These are the sorts of rain falls that we experience in the past every 100 years, every 150 years, sometimes every 200 years - they're very extreme.
"The question we've all got to ask is with increasing climate change are we going to see this sort of event more frequently and do we need to start re-engineering our drainage system across the nation.
"And flood proof our essential services like our roads and our railways and our airports and our police stations to make sure if these extreme events do occur that the water can be drained away safely."
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Swan-song: The birds seem happier than the humans with the flooding in Statford-upon-Avon
The tube was flooded
Water cascaded down the steps at Charing Cross underground station
Strensham Services on the southbound M5 carriageway had run out of petrol and diesel.
Huge queues formed on what is traditionally a busy getaway day with the start of the family holiday season.
Motorists on the M5 were spotted on Sky News driving up the hard shoulder in a desperate bid to escape the jams which saw them stuck overnight.
Gloucestershire Police warned that normal driving rules applied and if motorists were caught they would be treated in the usual manner.
The M5 traffic has began to slowly return to normal but Highways Agency warned that severe congestion on the M5 was not expected to ease quickly as the road reopened.
It was attempting to reunite cars abandoned on the hard shoulder of the motorway with their owners.
The M50 was closed in both directions due to severe flooding at junction 2, on the A417 near Ledbury.
While there were some complaints of a lack of help, others told how people had rallied round to provide refreshments and shelter.
Some 650 people were helped by a leisure centre in the Gloucester area, and caravanners also helped those without refreshments or toilet facilities.
A forecaster for MeteoGroup UK said that Pershore in Worcestershire appeared worst hit, with 145.4mm of rain in 25 hours.
Brize Norton in Oxfordshire was drenched in around 127mm of rain in the same time period.
The usual amount of rainfall for this time of year would be 50-60mm in a month, he said.
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Red alert: Flood waters rise at Statford-upon-Avon
Any port in a storm: She clearly hadn't heard the forecast, so this young woman was forced to shelter under her handbag in Piccadilly
The weather left the emergency services struggling to cope. West Mercia Police said emergency services were treating the flooding in south Worcestershire as a major incident.
They received around 1,500 emergency calls in 24 hours, compared with an average of 900.
The Hereford and Worcestershire Fire and Rescue Service said they received over 1,000 calls for help in the past 24 hours - an "unprecedented" 10 per cent of the figure they receive annually. It carried out around 300 rescues from homes and caravan parks.
Severe flooding is expected to hit the Tenbury Wells area throughout the day and the Environment Agency has also put severe flood warnings on the rivers Severn, Teme, Avon and Arrow.
Motorists were warned not to drive through flooded roads or fords as vehicles are likely to become stranded or swept away.
Holidaymakers needing to travel through Worcestershire and Herefordshire were urged to postpone the trip for at least 24 hours as a number of minor roads in the region have also been left impassable, police said.
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Downpours and thunderstorms are affecting southern England and Wales
Lightning strikes. In South London lightning set fire to some flats
A rubber dinghy is the only way to get around in parts of south London
Meanwhile, lifeboatmen carried out flood rescue operations in Worcestershire after being called in by the local authorities.
The team of 10 men and four inshore lifeboats began helping in operations in Droitwich, Kidderminster, Wick, Pershore and Hawford, where many people were trapped on top of their caravans. Several elderly people were rescued from houses.
In Gloucestershire, around 2,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters after being forced from their cars or homes due to the flooding.
Rest centres were set up in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, Chipping Campden and Moreton-in-Marsh.
Police temporarily shut the M5 motorway between junction 11 for Cheltenham up to junction 8 north of Tewkesbury.
The floods also forced passengers off trains at Oxford and Banbury with many of those stranded forced to sleep at Cherwell School in north Oxford.
At Bampton in the west of Oxfordshire more than 300 homes were affected by flooding with 1,200 left without power.
Some 140 flights going in and out of Heathrow Airport were cancelled due to the rain, and holidaymakers were being re-ticketed today.
The airport said that flights were now running as normal.
Reader views (27)
It is only a matter of time till these floods happen again so it is obvious that we in this country need a program of building like they have in New Orleans, especially around the flood plains where the most serious flooding has been.
- Robert Anderson, London UK, 21/07/2007 20:10
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Tell me Mitch Anthony, how are we responsible for these downpours? It fascinates me how you've come to this conclusion.
- Simon C, Beckenham, UK, 21/07/2007 17:28
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To the sceptics of weather change, global warming, call it what you will: About twenty years ago I had it explained to me in laymans terms. The wet gets wetter, the dry gets drier, the hot gets hotter and the cold gets colder. Simple. The professor who stated this simple truth seems to have been pretty close to the mark.
- Dennis, Taplow. U.K., 21/07/2007 10:43
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Typical - when London gets a few inches of rain, it's a major disaster. When the rest of the country gets flooded, it's business as usual...
- Graham Stewart, Sheffield, UK, 20/07/2007 21:45
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Do any of the councils whose roads flooded ever clear their drains? I drove through the Maidenhead area last Sunday and many roads were half flooded from the small downpour there was that day. It was clear that many drains were already blocked.
- Eric Hobson, London, UK, 20/07/2007 19:40
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Great isn't it to be able to blame all this freak weather on global warming? What rot!
Nature has cycles - cycles of heat, cold, wet and dry. It has displayed them for our amusement and terror since the beginning of time. These cycles will pass, as do they all. Blame the natural Earth, not its inhabitants. Our largest contributor of CO2 into the atmosphere is not the human race, but the sea. Dry up the sea and hey ho - much less CO2, but unfortunately no human race either.
It will pass. It always does. Nature uses these violent and aggressive tactics, I believe to restore the "status quo" as she does by earthquake (reduce the over population) volcanic eruption (let the pressure out of the earth's core) and Tsunami (again, population control.) I feel for those affected by these naturistic freaks in the weather, but we must learn to live with them, as did our ancesters millions of years hence. They will pass. They always do.
- Lal Lorien-Lewis, Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire, 20/07/2007 18:05
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That was rain today! Thought I would not make the journey from Crystal Palace to Beckenham as the roads were becoming flooded and water gushing from the drains etc. If this becomes a regular occurrence in the future, bet our MP'S will vote to relocate to higher ground in London and buy a nice boat etc. Long term the planet is changing naturally, and there is probably little we can do to change this change, and only slow it slightly. Anyway it was good to get back to sunny Broadstairs!
- Andy, Broadstairs, 20/07/2007 16:47
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Andrew's comments above betray an ignorance of what climate scientists do. What they look at is trends and averages, not individual weather events (it's simply not possible to say with any certainty that any particular event is caused by climate change).
No-one who has looked at the graphs could doubt that the world is experiencing a dramatic warming trend. This does not mean that there will no longer be any cool summers or cold winters anywhere in the world. It does mean that we will experience many more extreme weather events - as indeed we are already.
The misery caused by the floods, heatwaves, forest fires etc. now taking place around the world will be very small beer compared to the truly catastrophic effects of runaway climate change. Rather than grasping at illusory straws, we should all be considering what we can do to prevent this happening, both as individuals and via our elected representatives. It may not yet be too late.
- Tom Scott, Falmouth, UK, 20/07/2007 16:40
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It's all the fault of those pagans in Dorset - they said they'd do a rain dance to wash away the giant Homer Simpson next to the Cerne Abbas Giant...
- Janice, Leeds, UK, 20/07/2007 16:34
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Andrew and others might scoff but this is global warming at work: the whole order of seasons and climate is changing. It's nature's revenge for all the rubbish mankind has been chucking into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution.
- Tony, Lancashire, England, 20/07/2007 16:34
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Andrew, Harrow : Scientists say global warming will cause increased droughts and floods. And we have had ... increased droughts and floods. It's your understanding of science which is hot air. Pub-level arguments that 'it's all rubbish' don't stand up to an examination of the evidence. Luckily we don't depend on you for our disaster prevention plans over the next 50 years.
- Ed Sears, Derbyshire, 20/07/2007 15:53
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Oh my word, the rain was merciless here this morning, now the sun is cracking the flags, bizarre!
- Julie, Essex, 20/07/2007 15:50
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London has floods. This now means Britain has now officially been hit by floods and help is needed. Forget the fact that up north half the country have swam to work for last few weeks. I bet Great Britain, I mean London, won't have to wait as long as the northerners did for assistance.
- Jenno, Manchester, 20/07/2007 15:30
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So what exactly happened to the `2007 will be the hottest Summer ever' that so called `experts' predicted at the beginning of the year?
- Carlton, London, England, 20/07/2007 15:29
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Andrew of Harrow, global warming is happening but is not the cause for this years rains. The El Nino/La Nina in the pacific has knocked everything off. The gulf stream has changed and the weather coming straight through the UK now is what normally bypasses us up over Iceland or further north. Global warming is blamed for everything weather-wise but isn't always the case.
I also see that London is now suffering from what the midlands has had (and still has) for much of the last 2 months. We've just tried hard to get on with things throughout, and of course, moan about it lots!
- Ian, Derbyshire, 20/07/2007 15:19
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I still bet we have a hose pipe ban in August.....
- Dp, London, 20/07/2007 14:44
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At least we don't have a house pipe ban! We've been complaining for years there isn't enough rainfall.
- James, London, 20/07/2007 14:08
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If the ice-cap melts we're going to get wet. If the Gulf Stream is disrupted we're going to be cold. If conditions mimic the subtropics we could get drought or floods or hurricanes or who knows what. Andrew of Harrow can mock all he likes, but we just don't know what global warming will bring. We haven't fouled up on this scale before.
- Joe, West Bromwich, UK, 20/07/2007 13:51
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Global warming means we will have more unpredictable weather: that includes the possibility of colder winters, hotter wetter summers, prolonged periods of no rain etc. The fact is that with the effect of Global Warming on the gulf stream, we simply don't know how weather in the UK will change. It is impossible to say that THIS weather is caused by global warming, but we can see that there is a trend to more and more unstable weather generally.
- Pt, London, 20/07/2007 13:36
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Global warming disrupts weather patterns meaning that it could be sunny, raining or snowing at any time of the year, the weather is continuously changeable.
- Mike H, London, 20/07/2007 13:08
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Nearly all of my neighbours have completely paved over their front gardens so that they can park their cars; two more gardens have disappeared this week and my street is now under several inches of water. Driveways should all have to be converted by law so that they have at least 50% of drainable surface before London floods even more regularly than it does now.
- Alan P, London, England, 20/07/2007 13:06
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Global warming causes climate change, which can be more extremes of weather not just warming. Rain and wind need heat to power them.
Besides, this summer's weather is supposed to be caused by El Ninio, nobody has blamed it on Global Warming.
- Peter We, London, 20/07/2007 12:49
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"Nostadamus was right. We are responsible for this chaos. - Mitch Anthony, Weybridge, Surrey"
What channel does he do the weather on then?
- Md, London, 20/07/2007 12:43
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Nostadamus was right. We are responsible for this chaos.
- Mitch Anthony, Weybridge, Surrey, 20/07/2007 11:19
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Last year it was the hottest on record. The cause: Global Warming
This year it is the wettest on record: The cause: Global Warming
Next year it will be the coldest on record: The cause: Global Warming
Isn't it nice that we have something to blame even if the theory is just a load of hot air.
- Andrew, Harrow, UK, 20/07/2007 10:23
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Hurray, looks like I've managed to get away from the gardening again this weekend, only problem is that I'll now be decorating one of the spare bedrooms.
- Trevor Roll, London, 20/07/2007 10:02
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I bet it will be the heaviest, deepest or biggest raindrops on a Friday morning in July since records began.
- Bj, London, England, 20/07/2007 09:44
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