THE bill for damage to roads and bridges in the north west from last August’s unprecedented floods is expected to be as high as £12 million, a report has revealed.
Homes and businesses were wrecked and infrastructure swept away on the night of August 22/23, with Drumahoe, Eglinton, Burnfoot, Bridgend and Inishowen among the worst-hit areas.
A multi-agency review of the response by authorities, published yesterday, revealed that 400 homes in the Derry area were flooded.
The report by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), which deals only with damage north of the border, recommended improvements in 14 areas.
The authors said: “The development of these recommendations will help ensure that the improvements made in responding to flooding emergencies in recent years continues and that areas for further improvements are taken forward with a focused and tangible outcome.”
The review notes the absence of a multi-agency coordination centre last August and that a yellow weather warning failed to indicate the scale of the threat.
One of the key recommendations is that a new online mapping system be developed to report and display “real or near real-time” emergency flood calls.
The review concluded: “This platform must be capable of integrating information from other mapping systems to inform multi-agency emergency co-ordination actions.”
Flooding incident helplines should also be improved, after hundreds of calls went unanswered last year, while community groups should be established in areas of known flood risk.
The authors also recommended that rainfall measurement systems be expanded to improve flood risk assessment.
Processes by which councils reclaimed money spent on dealing with floods should also be streamlined.
A key focus of the review was the emotional support for those people affected and left homeless by the floods.
The authors recommended: “Building on action taken as a result of this emergency, identify and implement ways to further improve immediate and longer term psycho-social support for those affected in any future emergency in both the urban and rural communities.”
Representatives from all the agencies involved are expected to attend a public information day at Derry’s Everglades hotel tomorrow (3pm-8pm).
A spokesman for DfI said they would not only engage with local people on the review findings but would answer other flooding related questions.
The review is published at www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/flooding.
