In the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Flowers. “We’ve lost about £6,000 and we won’t get a penny back. Six weeks ago we lost about £4,000 in a flood.”He’s been trading in the heart of Tenbury for about seven years, and became emotional as he said: “If we get flooded again I’ll walk away, and the landlords can sue us. I don’t care, I’ll go bankrupt. I’ve had enough.”The Worcestershire market town hit the headlines this week when a 57-year-old man drove a tractor at speed down the flooded high street on Sunday, sending a wave of water towards businesses that smashed windows and doors, adding to the devastation.View image in fullscreenIt prompted outrage, and the driver was quickly arrested by the police. He has since apologised and said he was rushing to help a friend rescue someone from the flood waters.Locals said they hope the headlines draw attention to the existential threat facing Tenbury – that, without help, it could become the first UK town centre abandoned due to flooding exacerbated by climate change.“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it potentially could be abandoned,” said Dave Throup, a retired Environment Agency (EA) manager in the area and a flooding expert. “It sounds a dramatic claim, but people are already voting with their feet there.“If you keep getting flooded once or twice a year and can’t get insurance, you just can’t keep going on. Without some kind of flood defences, the future looks very bleak indeed.”In the past four years, Tenbury has been flooded seven times by the River Teme, and business owners said they had only just got back on their feet from a flood on 17 October, when the latest deluge hit.View image in fullscreenTenbury Wells is in a particularly precarious position as it’s a flat, low-lying town almost entirely surrounded by water – the Teme to the north and a tributary, the Kyre Brook, to the south.The town is often flooded by the Teme, and the Kyre Brook overspills into the town centre when the Teme is full and it has nowhere else to go. It can submerge whole streets in seconds, and this time around it demolished a wall holding back the water from the high street.“It’s a particularly dangerous flood, because it is so rapid onset, there isn’t that much warning,” said Throup. “With the Teme and the Kyre Brook, Tenbury gets hammered by two separate sources, the geography is unfortunate.”The climate crisis means the problem is getting worse. The Teme’s flood peaks at Tenbury are projected to increase by a median 20% this decade, even in a scenario with lower emission increases. Residents have also raised alarm a
Lun. Dic 23rd, 2024
