Flooding in Croydon

In a follow-up to this post on flooding in the Somerset Levels (that happen to be below sea level), Croydon also has a flooding problem.  Cyndi and I were up that way yesterday.  While Cyndi and Lydia went shopping, Isaac and I went for a walk and took some pictures.  You can see all of them in this set on flickr, but there’s a few below.

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The problem, as I see it, is an old dry (or mostly dry) river/creekbed that has no where to drain.  A huge roundabout has been built where the creek used to flow.  So, the solution is to pump the water out.  But, when they pump it out, it doesn’t have anywhere to go so they have to rely on the storm sewers to take it away.  They had come up with a plan to flood a subway (not what you are thinking) with the water they are pumping out (but that wasn’t in effect when Isaac and I were there).

On one hand, I feel for anyone whose homes have water because of this.  I can imagine it happened overnight with no warning (like a flash flood).  On the other hand, I can’t imagine there’s no bigger pumps anywhere on the island to pump it out.  Using fire engines just seem inefficient to me