Extreme weather
We are pretty used to covering floods, by and large. There are always one or two a year and there’s a pretty standard response in terms of newsgathering. Get there, get the pictures, hear the stories and see the clean-up.
Not this year. These are the worst floods any of us have seen in Britain and the challenge to report them has been huge.
We had a of course when , and had unprecedented amounts of water dumped on them in a few short hours.
News 24 had hours and hours of live coverage, ±«Óătv One had extended bulletins and a special programme devoted to the disaster that had devastated thousands of homes.
Now we’re at it again but with different place names popping up on screen - Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Abingdon.
The principal difficulty with these kinds of stories is knowing precisely where the problems are going to be.
We knew there would be a huge amount of rain and the forecasters were very accurate about the general area it would fall. But no-one had predicted the M5 would be under water, that water treatment works would become submerged or that electricity supplies would be threatened.
The old reporter’s cliché about the first light of dawn revealing the full extent of the disaster was apt as always.
Like other broadcasters, we generally have fewer resources to deploy at weekends because generally we don’t need them. But this weekend we had some contingency plans which swiftly came into action.
Getting the first pictures is always a race and as usual viewers sent in hundreds of images and moving picture captured on their mobile phones while our own camera crews struggled to get to the various locations.
Even so, we didn’t have a real idea of the scale until our helicopter arrived and started beaming pictures of a flooded landscape back into Television Centre.
We put our West of England correspondent Jon Kay on board at one point and he vividly described the scene below him, the sense of shock at the awesome power of nature clearly discernable in his voice.
It’s true television news seems almost to have been invented for covering extreme weather. The pictures are often dramatic and keep even the most disinterested glued to the screen - my youngest daughter for one.
But in our enthusiasm to cover the story and tell our audiences what has happened to these communities, we should never forget the great deal of human suffering - and sometimes tragedy - which accompanies them.
That’s the real challenge - to go beyond splashing about in waders and finding how people’s lives have been affected by the worst floods in a generation.
Comments
What a long time ago the warm and sunny month of April seems now. One could hardly move on the ±«Óătv website for articles blaming global warming for the long, hot drought ridden summer we were going to have, thanks to President Bush and capitalism and Israel and stuff.
How's that camera doing in Kew Gardens by the way? The one that was going to record the shriveling of the plants in the extreme Sahara like conditions? Perhaps it's been washed away. I think we should be told.
I'm sure the people of Hull, Sheffield and Doncaster will be delighted to see you dismiss their horrendous flooding as a "practice run" for the far more important southern towns going through a lesser trauma. The nearer to London something like this happens, it seems the ±«Óătv's coverage increases exponentially.
Oh come on Neil, he clearly doesn't mean it like that. Sometimes I wonder why some people bother to read this blog...
"We put our reporter Jon Kay up in the Helly Telly" This was presumably just a 'practice' run for when you could put up George Alagiah to do exactly the same thing and presumably justify his salary.
Some very good coverage, but why do George and Kate Silverton have to sound so bloody excited about the prospect of Gloucester being flooded, and positively gutted when the town/substation is saved from the deluge ?
And what is she doing wearing waders for heaven's sake - talk about being melodramatic [ as evidenced by still talking about the risk of 'thousands of people losing their electricity' AFTER the saving of the sub-station and the high point of the river had passed]
This isn't the tone of the Today programme at all - who sound relieved that disaster was averted. I expect that Kate and George are haranguing the Navy, Army and Fire Service for putting an end to all the excitement - or that is how it seems to me...
The only really insightful commentary on the whole fiasco was by Eddie Mair who conducted a wonderful interview with the Environment Minister Hilary Benn - now if only we could stuff like that on News 24 instead of over excitable presenters rushing around in helicopters like school children !
It's an interesting admission that the ±«Óătv has no news for two sevenths of the week: "we generally have fewer resources to deploy at weekends because generally we don’t need them". News may differ but it does not stop at 5pm on a London Friday as this event shows. There should not need to be 'standby' weekend teams because two days of the week exist as much as the other five. Much of the rest of the world is working and the UK itself has businesses working flat out, leisure activities, life. Time to update the ±«Óătv?
I thought the coverage by the ±«Óătv has been less offensive than the media on other channels on thw hole they show more respect for the privacy for those affected by this calamity, perhaps the real tragedy here is in not establishing who endorses the building of housing in such vulnerable zones without provision against such disasters; I'm sure that if 'the man who bought his house built on the sand' knew the final cost he would have been more prudent! Do we ever learn lessons from the past? and just what does it take to make the public ask more questions of those appointed to building housing on secure ground before another tragedy occurs? The lack of accountability is not as really asstounding as it should be.
Of course the one really good bit of news is knowing that there is absolutely no danger whatsoever of Natasha Kaplinsky venturing anywhere there is the smallest danger she might get her hair wet..
We have to be grateful for small mercies.
Is there any particular reason why all the news channels descend on the same places?
Car sharing to save the planet, I hope...
Also, is there any particular reason why, from time to time, normally deskbound newscasters take to reading the news outside? I used to like sunny days at school because we took our desks out and did the lessons in fresh air. News people only seem to want to go outside when the world is falling apart (Or at least when they want to give that impression). Digesting the day's politics, sport and whatnot while stood in front of a Police cordon or as floodwaters lap around your feet seems daft to me. No desk to shuffle your papers on for a start. Besides, isn't that what roving reporters are for?
JillP:
Of course there is less news at the weekend.
Who issues press releases or holds news conferences on a Saturday or Sunday?
Courts are closed, Parliaments are closed - all around the world.
It's a simple fact there is less news at the weekend.
I, for one, am glad the ±«Óătv does not waste money at the weekend.
Well said Gareth,
I cant wait for the day when the news reports that all the helicopters used by 'reporters' have crashed into each other, or someone falls out of their rubber boat while doing a piece to camera.
Or maybe in their panic to find the deepest water to stand in they hit the river bed!!!!
The floods in the North dismissed as a "a practice run"?
You're joking right?
Just as well the flood waters didn't reach the top of James Buchanan's ivory tower
It is ludicrous to send a news presenter to a flooded town so that they can be seen standing knee deep in water holding a clipboard and simply introducing films from other reporters. What do they add? That job can be done more effectively from the studio, and without the risk of interruption from local yobs. And why send a weatherman there? Surely weather forecasting is about collecting information from all over the country and analysing it. How can you do that effectively out in the field splashing about in the mud? Leave the field work to the reporters.
JillP - There is a reason you can by Sunday's paper on Saturday afternoon - they are written by close of play on a Friday. Scaling down of resources means that people aren't sitting around waiting for nothing to happen!
The reason Natasha Kaplinsky is not in the field is because she is a news reader and magazine show presenter (±«Óătv Breakfast - not a news show by any stretch), not a news reporter. This is despite the ±«Óătv telling a Commons Select Committee that Moria Stewart was dropped due to her being a news reader not a news reporter. If NK was an actual news reporter then should would be out in the field reporting news.
As for the practise run comment - a very poorly judged tongue-in-cheek comment that will not exactly please those people who have been flooded out in Hull etc. The ±«Óătv just lacks talent in this repect.
I'm adding my voice to the tastelessness of the "practice run" comment.
The only time anyone bothers about not-London/Edinburgh/Cardiff is when there's a General election, and suddenly there's an enquiry as to what the non-London public are interested in.
One of the worst things for media has been its centralising in London - the US doesn't have a single "national" newspaper, which while making things more parochial at one level does mean that people know what's going on locally.
24 hour news has focused mostly on London, to the detriment of the wider story, and endless speculation.
Yes, we're short of houses in the London area, but in the North they're pulling down large swathes of housing. And what about the fact that the people needing housing have to live somewhere - perhaps the buy-to-let boom has meant that houses that would otherwise be available to buy have suddenly become lets.
My Scottish friends have long be-moaned that a lot of the "news" has no impact on them. As a northerner-in-exile, I'd like to hear more about the "practice run" floods and the aftermath. What about following up on the Carlisle floods a couple of years ago?
I note that when Victoria St, SW1 was under 6" of water it was headline news. It took 6' elsewhere to make the national news.
“…be delighted to see you dismiss their horrendous flooding as a "practice run" for the far more important southern towns going through a lesser trauma.”
Oh yes, because none of the southern towns and villages flooded 4 weeks ago, hmm?
I’ve been flooded twice now in a month (located in Winchcombe, one of the first to be hit on Friday), with this second event even worse, and now we’re without running tap water for possibly the next week, as well as burdened with a kitchen needing to be ripped out (it’s a suspended floor), and all the downstairs woodwork & plastering to be redone. Not to mention a ruined crop of vegetables and a recently built shed that’s likely needing replacement.
Please think before you open your…
Please tell me the purpose of having Kate Silverton in Gloucester. The news anchor in the studio passed across to her and she immediately moved on to reports by lesser presenters, with no actual story of her own. Surely this role could have been fulfilled by the anchor. ±«Óătv News seems intent on wasting money by having someone "on the scene" when there is no value to it. We are constantly seeing presenters/reporters stood by the perimeter fence of a closed airport or hanging around outside Downing Street at midnight when absolutely nothing is happening. These OBs cost a fair bit of money that could be better spent actually INVESTIGATING NEWS!
I see some of you have picked up on my use of the phrase “practice run”. Apologies if you think it was meant dismissively.
What I was trying to say was that we learnt lessons about how we covered the floods in Yorkshire which we've applied to Gloucestershire.
We're learning lessons in Gloucestershire to apply the next time, which I hope won't be very soon at all. That's what I meant by a practice run...
Assessing the nature and extent of the impact that a natural disaster has had is always a problem especially in the early hours following the event. In the case of the tsunami, the impact ranged over thousands of miles on two continents. I recall that many governments were making wild promises of aid donations immediately while the US government was criticized extensively for not doing the same but waiting until a naval task force could assess the extent and nature of the damage. It took about a day or two at which point American government commitments began being made. It was also pointed out that uniquely, large sums of private American aid even exceeding what the government had committed were also sent. It was interesting that in the most recent report I've seen by ±«Óătv about a year ago, most governments delivered actual relief of only about a million dollars or less, far below what they had promised while the US delivered something like around 60 or 80 million still far short of its promise. In some cases of US aid this may have been the result of local economies not being able to absorb aid faster than a certain rate while in others, local administrative problems cropped up. I think in one case, Sri Lanka the recipient government actually wanted to tax the aid that was being donated. That's gratitude for you.
In the case of hurricaine Katrina, what seemed like an interminable delay between the storm and relief was actually only about 60 hours. The storm hit on a Monday morning and raged all day long. Assessments should have begun on Tuesday at daybreak with relief rushed in immediately but all levels of government seemed paralyzed until on Thursday midday, the federal government began a massive relief and rescue operation. There was plenty of blame for the delay to go around at all levels of government but FEMA and President Bush took the brunt of it. It only made things worse to see President Bush on a golf course in the Carolinas only few hundred miles away saying what a great job Michael Brown had been doing when in fact neither he nor anyone else seemed to be doing much of anything. By American standards the delay was unacceptable and a poltical disaster, in part responsible for the Democrats gaining control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections.
By comparison, the flooding in Britain although a tragedy for those who are victims of it seems minor by comparison. The flooded area resulting from Katrina after all covered as large a territory as all of Great Britain combined.
What I woud like to know is how often thes ebowsers are refilled. They are always empty in Hucclecote!
I WONDERED IF GLOUCESTER HAD SUFFERED SEVERE FLOODING IN THE 13TH CENTURY, WHEN ACCORDING TO THE NURSERY RHYME "DOCTOR FOSTER WENT TO GLOUCESTER ALL IN A SHOWER OF RAIN HE STEPPED IN A PUDDLE RIGHT UP TO HIS MIDDLE AND NEVER WENT THEIR AGAIN"
APPARENTLY DOCTOR FOSTER WAS KING EDWARD I
Good coverage from the ±«Óătv,although i thought Sky News was more informative and seemed to handle the story with more sympathy and i felt they gave a beeter representation of the floods.
I went to India during the first spate of flooding. It was supposed to be monsoon weather in Hyderabad, but Rotherham seemed to get the brunt of it!
With much focus on the human misery of peoples homes being flooded, I am surprised that you have completely neglected to report anything about the major problems being caused to other public service like hospitals. For example, I have been told that the failure of the water supply has meant that Cheltenham hosiptal has had to refuse chemotherapy to cancer patients, I guess the same would apply to dialysis.. a situation that will presumably require patients with such serious illnesses as cancer having the misery of attempting to travel to other hospitals thorugh all the chaos of our flood damaged transport systems...Do you think you could report the whole story please?
Your explanation of El Nino so far has been very poor - last night on the 10, your science editor said the current weather was possibly down to cold water coming the coast of Chilke. Erm, it does this every year - it is called the Humboult Current. El Nino brings warm water acropss from the west Pacific, pushing the Humboult current (and the fish which feed on the plankton it carries) further out into the ocean. I predicted a funny year back in early may on the website of one ITV weathergirl - the knowledge of the current and its local effect is on the 2000 yr old city of Chan Chan. Now, if they and I can get it right?
Incidentally, "The principle difficulty" is actually "principal". Your reports do not carry much weight when presented by the likes of kate Silverton, usually assigned to reading an autocue or entertainment trivia. The number of newscasters and weather presenters down in the West Country makes it look like a jolly for those normally stuck in Television Centre. ITN's coverage is dreadful, but there is no need for the ±«Óătv to try to emulate it.
Congratulations to the Red Cross for starting their flood appeal. It needs to be extended. We respond generously to overseas emergencies, now, our own people affected by the floods are suffering and will continue to do so for weeks maybe months. Many people are waiting to be asked to help.
Money raised should be funneled though grass roots local organisations, children's and mother's charities, Help the Aged, churches, local charities and clubs Rotary and the Womens Institute. Certainly not national or local government bodies to much would be siphoned off along the way.
The television coverage of this episode of flooding has I think been generally very good. This is what television news reporting is best at in the modern world - on the spot reporting showing the human face of tragic events like floods as they happen.
My concern is that as the flood waters recede attention will turn to other things and the people who are trying to repair the flood damage, often without insurance, will be forgotten. Lets hope that TV doesn't have a short memory and continues to show us how people are coping in the aftermath of the flood with the task of repair and rebuilding.
Thank you for the brilliant flood pictures, but do please cut out the blame. Round us in Evesham it has flooded every few years, but this time the rescue services have been particularly good. More pictures please but less of the reporters. There is no need to show a reporter in a helicopter, they can talk over the picture.
Why don't you use local reporters as they know the area and it takes less fuel to get them there?
By the way have you heard about the floods in China? I believe they are much worst than ours.
It is not too difficult to make drinking water from pretty muddy rivers. I have lived in several parts of the world where I have had to purify the drinking water. Here is what we used to do.
1. Let it stand so that the largest particles sink.
2. Filter through coffee filter paper, or paper towel, or even a large clean handkerchief.
3. Filter through a water filter.
4. Boil.
5. Cool and drink.
The flooding throughout the UK is absolutely horrendous. Why in this day and age cant there be adequate risk management techniques in place to limit destruction and damage?
The people that are being deprived of basic human needs such as clean water is disgraceful given that we live on an Island surrounded by water which could be transported with ease if we can fill tankers with fuel we can fill them with water? Why arnt there any stagegies to get aid deployed faster? The UK can deploy aid to other countries in less time following natural desasters such as earth quakes and floods but it comes some what more slowly to our own. This I would rate as a natural disaster in it's own right.
I find it hard to believe that disaster funds can be launched within hours of disaters overseas and the whole world rallies round. Nothing as far as I have seen has been talked about.
I am fortunate that I live in the Northwest which is an area that has not been affected by the flooding, but find it very hard to imagine the impact that this is having on peoples lives, livelyhoods and wellbeing.
The emergency sevices are doing all they can and it must be very hard as they too are probably feeling the effects personally of the disaster too.
Lastly what effect is this going to have had on our wildlife and farmers livestock who aren't lucky enough to escape the rising waters. A very sad situation for a Country as advanced of ours.
It’s not surprising water bowsers are running dry, as every reporter seems to feel the need to fill a water bottle to show viewers what they mean!
At times of stress and danger the great British Public can always be relied upon to bind together and support all those who are in a worse situation than themselves.
At a time when so very many sincere people are striving for harmony between our selves and those who have arrived from elsewhere, the exhibition of the the obviously immigrant gentleman in Tewkesbury hoarding water (or, was he planning to profit from it?) undermines much of the nation's eforts and sadly encourages hostility from certain parts of our community. His arrogance was unacceptable.
At times of stress and danger the great British Public can always be relied upon to bind together and support all those who are in a worse situation than themselves.
At a time when so very many sincere people are striving for harmony between our selves and those who have arrived from elsewhere, the exhibition of the the obviously immigrant gentleman in Tewkesbury hoarding water (or, was he planning to profit from it?) undermines much of the nation's eforts and sadly encourages hostility from certain parts of our community. His arrogance was unacceptable.
Brought up in Australia and practising architecture in UK. I find the lack of interest in architecture in other parts of the world rather sad. In Queensland, houses have been built above the flood plain with utilities under the main reception rooms.
In America it is common to find the reception floors at least 1.5 metres off the ground.
As the desire to continue building on marginal land (flood plains) will continue, why not adopt some of the above ideas?
Case law may decide a few planning polcies, especially if a flooded resident manages to sue the planning departments and building control for allowing housing unfit for purpose.
I would love to design the first flood proof housing estate. Any commisons welcome.
Traditonally the UK is one of the first to offer and give aid to flood, drought and natural disasters in other Countries.
It would be interesting to know how many offers of International aid and or help we have had for our flood problems. Few I should think. Perhaps we should review our aid policy ???
I think there should be wide spread information, pehaps on the nightly news on how people can collect their own rain water and filter it. People are unaware of what they should do. It would perhaps stop people panicing, and with all the rain water falling they can collect their own to use for wasing, toilet etc.
If the extreme weather is due to warming, and as we here, countries like the usa and china are causing devastation with their greed by producing excessive climate damaging gases etc, then WHY DON'T WE JUST BOYCOTT THEIR GOODS? If we all did this then they would soon learn their lesson.China always tries to hide things we dont like such animal barbarism and won't listen to the rest of the world about global warming.The usa think they can do what they want while telling the rest of the world what to do.why don't we show these countries we are not all sheep?
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain
He stepped into a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never went there again
recently, we watched the digital weather, and also the ceefax, to double check, both were different, then we watched the live weather report, and that was different too,
whats going on, I know you have changeable spells in the UK
bring back michael fish.
Perhaps they should build more multi-stories ?
I am experienced in dealing with flooding and have a vessel which can carry two of any kind. I will be making trips twice daily to most affected areas, but groups must be restricted to a maximum of two. Pets welcome.
Regards,
Noah.
Well predicted Ray (#10),
Today we have the sad news that 2 news helicopters have indeed crashed into each other (in the US albeit) whilst chasing a news "story".
I suppose this was inevitable - news gatherers making the news. Where will it all end?
Please chain all the "star" reporters from the media to their desks for a while or we will end up with a modern version of the classic "Whicker's Island" sketch as "newshounds" fall over each other at the scene of the latest "disaster".
PM just met President:
PM: Dubya, can't stay long , we got our own Katrina back home.
Pres: Brownie, you're doing a heckofa job.
OI!!
EVERYONE SHUT UP....I WOULD LIEK TO SEE YOU DO A BETTER JOB!!!
BE QUITE ALL OF YOU AND STOP BEING SO HORRIBLE!!!