Watertight plan

While one cannot help being sorry for all those people who were caught up in the winter floods, I recall that, when 
watching television coverage of the 2007 floods, I saw at 
least one house sliding a UPVC plastic shutter into pre-
positioned slots on the front door, thereby making the entrance as watertight as the side of a walk-in bath.

A local manufacturing firm told me there were a number of firms already in the market 
producing these. The people whose houses were vulnerable to flooding therefore had seven years to take appropriate protective action.

Similarly, when, six months ago, the local authorities strongly pressurised the government to dredge the rivers and ditches in the Somerset Levels to prevent flooding, when they got no response, did they warn the householders of the risk?

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They would have had six months to fill 20 or 30 readily available heavy-duty rubble sacks with either sand or soil and have them to hand to make their houses watertight, instead of complaining after the event that the government was five days late in getting the troops and sandbags on the ground.

It may be appropriate that any house to be built on a flood plain, or at risk of flooding near a river, should automatically be constructed to be watertight in an emergency.

I believe I saw one house that had a drainage sump, complete with pump, built in under the house.

The weather forecasters say that what happened this year could be a regular occurrence.

JAMES GOLDIE

Bonaly Crescent

Edinburgh