Article published at www.sellyparksouth.org.uk/features
the community website for Selly Park South Neighbourhood Forum.
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On Saturday 22nd May the Selly Park South Flood Action Group held their annual main exercise of the Neighbourhood Flood Action Plan.
The Group was set up as part of the Neighbourhood Forum’s response to the serious flooding of September 2008, in which a substantial number of properties were flooded and many more only just escaped. The Group currently consists of a Coordinator, Deputy Coordinator, five Flood Wardens each in charge of implementing the Flood Plan for a particular road and a team of Flood Volunteers. The Volunteers have all been equipped to step up to the role of Flood Warden, should any of the Wardens be unavailable. The Flood Group has a total membership of 26, all of them local residents although with a third of the team living outside the flood risk zone who are giving up their time to help those people living in the risk zone. On the day of the exercise 20 members of the Flood Group were available to take part.
The Flood Action Plan was developed jointly by the SPS Flood Group, Birmingham Resilience Team (the Emergency Planning Department of the City Council) and the Environment Agency. The first full exercise of the Flood Plan took place in May 2010 which led to a number of modifications and improvements being made. As a result the exercise worked very well this year and at the feedback meeting which immediately followed the exercise it was felt that only minor adjustments are now needed.
The Flood Plan has five alert levels which are triggered by Met Office severe weather warnings and Environment Agency flood alerts and flood warnings. Communications between members of the Flood Group and between the Coordinator and the Environment Agency and Birmingham Resilience Team duty officers is all via mobile phones. Additionally the Group has flood defence equipment available and this is stored at the St Andrews Healthcare Hospital, situated close to the flood risk zone, which has security staff and vehicles available to deliver the equipment to the Flood Plan Area Control Points 24/7 throughout the year. The Flood Group and Neighbourhood Forum are very grateful to St Andrews Healthcare for this vital support.
On the morning of the exercise the first alert calls went out at 09:00 and the Flood Group personnel were mobilised and moved onto the streets from 09:30. Deployment took approximately 15 minutes and within a further 15 minutes all of the flood defence equipment has been successfully delivered. The Flood Volunteers then carried out various tasks including making a series of warning announcements by megaphones to residents, who had been fore-warned that the exercise would take place. At 11:00 the exercise on the streets was concluded, the equipment collected to be returned to store and the members of the Flood Group met at Christ Church on Pershore Road where refreshments were served and the feedback meeting took place. The whole operation came to a close at 12:30.The time scale for the purposes of the exercise was considerably compressed – the experience of the September 2008 floods suggest that in reality a number of hours would pass between the first alert being called and mobilisation and that then the whole flooding incident would be likely to last for a further several hours.
We do all of course hope that the Flood Action Plan will never have to be fully implemented for real, but the trend of increasingly severe rainfall events over recent years means that we must be prepared and we are confident that should it be needed then the Flood Plan would provide substantial support for the residents of the neighbourhood.
