Monday 5 March 2018

Could we have coped with weeks of the likes Storm Emma?

Much of the UK has been on lock-down for nearly a week as we faced severe weather courtesy of Storm Emma.

Within a few days supermarket shelves were empty as people  not only bought essential food items like  bread and milk, but also saw supermarkets closed and those that remained open failing to replenish stocks.

It makes you wonder how we would cope if we had a similar blizzard to 1962-63 where it lasted weeks  or the The 1982 blizzard when it snowed almost non stop for 36 hours.

This time the snow was not so deep but such was the nature of Storm Emma it was virtually impossible to move in it and just as one section of road was cleared it was blown backed again.

As before however we saw a great community spirit  in 1982 it emerged through the medium of local radio, but this time it was social media like Facebook that came into its own.

My local "Beddau Hub" on Facebook  almost immediately saw people owning 4 by 4s offering  to ferry or take home health workers from  local hospitals.

Other offered to shopping for people who were unable to get to the shops.

We were kept updated on what was open or closed .

We need to take a lesson from this and expand  such innovation  in the future.

However we need to ask some question/

Given that we knew days beforehand that the "Beast from the East" was coming why wasn't the army deployed before hand so they could respond  with their all terrain vehicles in the areas that were going to get the worst of it?

Fortunately we don't get these weather conditions often and we can't responds like Canada where they can have 60 day's snow and have heavily invested in the the machinery to deal with it.

The local response in my area was magnificent , but central and local government knew this was coming , should we look into how they responded?

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