English people may just be aware of it but Sheffield (a post-industrial city in the centre of England) and lots of other cities in Yorkshire (the county) have recently had its worst floods for over 100 years.
Here are some pictures that a friend of my mother took (attachment).
And to my eternal delight, the little village of Catcliff was visited by non other than Price Charles, the Prince of… Wales. Here he is! I know if my house was flooded, the first person I’d like to see would be This guy!
Well that’s some trivial news for everyone while the poor people of the suburbs of our city try to repair the damage to their homes.
I think about 5 people died as well after getting washed away. Tragic really…
Let me be the first to offer my condolances to those who didn’t fair too well by the weather, around the country. Pretty cool though, breaks some monotony.
It’s going to take a billion pounds out of the Government and the insurance industry, and months to put the damage right. Individual householders may be stopping in hotels for months to come as contractors compete for the best-paying jobs. The knock on effect will be felt far wider than the towns and cities affected. It’s terrible. (As an insurance claims handler, I’ve been in flood-affected houses after previous floods.)
About 70 people were killed in floods in Pakistan in a single day this week. It’s barely made the newspapers in the UK.
[RIGHT]The floods will still go down in the history of the area forever, though when compared to the atrocities and disasters around the world: a flood where a couple hundred are made homeless and a few die, is relatively minor.
Ah, but this morning, they were talking on the radio about the East Anglian floods, which I think were 1953. They had people of my age (40 something) being interviewed who said that when they had been given school projects about the flood (that would have been late 1960s/early 1970s) they assumed it was “just a story” because they had heard little or nothing about the real events from their parents’ generation.
So that means these things might be in the “history” (as in written down) but not in the “history” as in collective memory and consciousness.
We forget so easily. That’s why the “war to end wars” was followed only 21 years later by, er… a bigger war.
