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| River Bela Sat 5 December 2015 |
You
don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realise if you have land next to a river at
some point it is going to flood. When we got Ellers last year we were very much
aware of this fact and one of the aims of having Ellers was to show how to
manage land in a flood plain. Flooding has always been at the back of our minds,
but what a crazy 24 hours Storm Desmond brought. With already saturated ground
and Environment Agency (EA) flood warnings changing very quickly from Amber to
Red we knew the River Bela was going to be high, but we were not quite prepared
for how high.
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| As high as 15 November 2015 on 5 December 2015 |
Saturday
morning (5th December 2015) the Bela was nearly the same level as when it
flooded on the 15th November 2015 so the question was 1) when is it
going to stop raining and 2) how high will the Bela get this time? Our new
mobile field shelter is located at the same level as the meadow and pond field
where the chickens and bee hives are located. Previously until Storm Desmond
these locations were considered the safe zones from flood, but as the day went
on it was clear that these areas of the field were in danger. By 2pm on
Saturday we started checking Ellers more regularly and by 8.30pm water was
lapping at the field shelter doors and it was looking like the our two hen
houses could also be flooded. Our sheep and Smudge (Emma who works for us
horse) were locked out of the field shelter and encouraged with hay to stay on
the hillock (highest part of the field) and the hen houses were put on bricks.
Everything that was in danger was moved to the hillock and then all we could do
is keeping checking on animals through the night. I did the last check at
12.30am and Andrew and Ray checked about every hour and half until 5:30am.
One good thing came out of the night checks as we did have a glimpse of the nocturnal life at Ellers with our local Barn owl taking shelter on our fence posts and being an opportunists as she hunted the edges of the flood water. The kingfisher also had new feeding grounds and did not seem bothered about us humans.
Our worry
was that the water was going to go over the Beetham road bridge and if that
happened then things were going to get really serious. Between 3 and 4am the
water peaked at 2.11 metres, which is the highest ever record level (previously
the last highest recording was in 1999 and the water peaked at 1.73 metres).
This resulted in over a foot of water through the mobile field shelter, water
lapping under the Hen houses and importantly the water had reached the top of
the arch of the road bridge. By 5am the water level seemed to be similar, but
by 6.30am the water started to thankfully retreat slowly and it had stopped
raining! Huge relief! Animals all safe on the hillock, hens saved by bricks and
the flood came within 14cm of the bee hives!
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| Sunday 6 December - Animals getting some welcome hay! |
By
Mid morning Monday (7th December) the Bela was back to a more normal
level and we escaped lightly with a couple of fence repairs and field shelter
to muck out. However others were not so lucky and Bela flooded homes (many
never flooded before), Beetham Paper Mill, roads and football pitches.
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| Monday 7 December 2015 |
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| Trees planted last year made it though the floods! |
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| Nearly back to normal |
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| Hale Moss in flood, taken from Farleton Knott |
Is
this a once in 100 year flood event? I am not too sure, with climate change our
weather is evolving and flooding is just one element that we are going to have
to adapt too. I have now lived in Cumbria for 10 years and have witnessed many
floods in the Lake District and between 2005 and 2011 every November I
experienced big floods. I always say
that if it rains in the Lake District for more than six hours there is a risk
of flooding! There is still standing water in many fields and I can already
hear the echo’s of many land owners saying we need to dredge the rivers and
ditches, but I really believe we are past this thinking and we need to apply
some science and common sense to the situation as it really is inevitable that
in some areas you are always going to get flooding. For example just down the
road from Ellers we have an area called Hale Moss, which has been massively
drained for farming. However, this area at one time was a glacial lake, then a
moss and is now mainly farmland with moss habitat around the edges. When we
have lots of rain the area just reverts back to its natural geology of a lake
until the water subsides.
We
all need to change how we manage our land and not on an individual basis but as
a catchment. By looking at whole landscapes and zoning it for different land
uses we could make a huge different to how we deal with big flood events like
Storm Desmond. The journalist George Monbiot is quite rightly highlight these
issues (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/hide-evidence-storm-desmond-floods-paris-talks),
although the question is will the government and large land owning charities who
could make a difference listen and also speak out?
