22 Nov 09 Cumbrian flood – worse than the flood is the flood publicity

Responding to The Guardian’s recent article After the deluge, a sodden Cumbria begins to clear up

"…a tightly cut shot of the biggest puddle they could find"?

It occurred to me that the flood is not really the worst of it. After the cameras have gone, after the politicians have had their photo opportunity, after the waters (both real and metaphorical) have receded, you are left with one big mess to clear up. As always, you will have to do this yourself. All the political promises and commitments will disintegrate as soon as the publicity opportunity presented by your misfortune has passed.

As a victim of the 2007 floods (I live near Upton Upon Severn, Worcs) I am afraid to tell flood victims that their troubles are only just beginning.

For a couple of weeks, your towns will be filled with satellite dished transit vans and Ugg wearing radio and TV types hugging their North Face Jackets and sipping paper cups of tea between 30 second ‘live reports’ where they talk of ‘carnage strewn streets’ and other sound-bitten nonsense in front of tightly cut shots of the biggest puddle they can find.

For the first time in living memory you will see a recognisable politician or two: Gordon Brown and David Cameron will both turn up wearing their concerned faces and suggest everything from money to action but promise only to review things and report at some undefined point in the future. And then as soon as a cat gets run over outside Parliament, they will be gone and onto the next photo opportunity. In the next couple of months Kate Silverton (or similar) will show up and do an environment special for TV. In about six months Prince Charles will fly in and shake your hand. All of them will be doing it to fulfil their own remit and agendas. Strangely it won’t do you any good at all.

You will be left with a big mess, ruined houses, cowboy builders moving into your area and insurance companies. It took us eight months to get Zurich Insurance to even respond to our calls. They sent some loss adjusters round from time to time who started by throwing all our belongings away and variously described our situation as “a bit of DIY” through periodic derisory “final settlement offers” of £20k, then £25k and so it incrementally crept. The process slowly marches with infuriating inertia designed to make you desperate. If you snap and shout they offer you a few grand hoping you will take it so that they can kill off the file on their desks. To put it into perspective, they were trying to settle our case for £100,000 less than it cost to repair the property – and it took them over a year to get even that far. We were left entirely to own devices, we were taken for a ride by builder and engineers and all with the insurance industry nowhere to be seen. We were out of our house for two years, only moving back in in June this year. The bill ended up being £120k – all of it hard fought miles for us and achieved in spite of the insurance company, certainly not with their help.

At some point, you will be subjected to skewed research exercises asking all the wrong questions. The research will all be designed to conclude that you actually need something cheap like better flood warnings when everyone else knows that you need serious investment in flood defenses.

You will spend months and years living in holiday flats and other temporary accommodation. Your childrens’ right to attend local schools will then come under threat, you will never receive complete compensation for all you have lost and when it is all behind you, you will not be able to sell your house.

If you are a victim of this flood, this is probably not what you want to hear, but you might as well hear it from someone who has been through it rather than any number of people who don’t know what they are talking about and feel that now would be a good to time to tell you how you are feeling, what you should do, where you should live and why it’s all your fault for living on a flood plain – Even if you haven’t personally been flooded, try selling your house and moving now your area is blighted by flood publicity.