Christmas and new year brought misery to thousands of people around the UK with widespread flooding and windstorm damage.
While we have seen some exceptional weather over recent years the scale and extent of the flooding this time round was at times unprecedented.
With more bad weather still to come, flood warnings remain in place from the Environment Agency.
Environment Agency teams have been working around the clock to close coastal flood gates, shore up flood defences, deploy temporary defences, monitor water levels and issue flood warnings. The Thames Barrier has been closed with each high tide and will continue to close to protect people and property along the Thames.
John Curtin, head of incident management at the Environment Agency said: "With several severe flood warnings still in place we would urge people to be prepared by checking their flood risk, signing up to free flood warnings and keeping an eye on the latest flood updates via the EA website and Twitter.
"We have protected some 130,000 properties across the country over the past 24 hours, and the Environment Agency will continue to work around the clock to check flood defences and close tidal gates to protect communities. We would again remind people to avoid coastal paths and promenades which could be dangerous.”
When the waters recede, property owners will face the unenviable task of clearing up the mess.
Some will be trying to put their lives back together without the aid of insurance as many people in areas prone to flooding are struggling to get cover at any premium - or find that even if they have a policy they are unable to claim.
What will happen to these properties in the future? If owners cannot get insurance cover can the properties ever be sold at anything other than a fraction of market value - if at all?
EAT thinks that the Government and the insurance industry must work together to deal with this crisis before it is too late.
Comments
What causes flooding is simple. It's water.
In the states and elsewhere that gets huge volumes of the wet stuff, they have it sorted. They are storm drains.
Locally, there was a flooded road causing chaos by the primary school. I stuck the point of my gold brolly into the compressed mass of dirt which was filling the drain cover and watched with great satisfaction a small whirlpool appear as the flood gradually disappeared.
If council actually cleaned all the drains and installed those we see in Florida, a huge number of floods would be avoided and more money could be diverted to flood defences near rivers & coasts
We are continually bombarded with reports of flooding being caused by bad weather. I don't think it is. Since the early 1970s, a change in local authority responsibilities meant that local water companies became responsible for drainage. They have never shouldered this responsibility and that is why you see blocked ditches and alder trees constricting stream and river beds everywhere. Another historical problem has been road widening schemes of the 1960s where roadside ditches were piped and gullied. That prevents water soaking into the ground which has to go somewhere eventually. Some may remember the water shortage in Yorkshire in 1995 - ditches over the moors had been neglected for so long that water from the wet peat could not trickle down to the reservoirs. Blame poor maintenance.