Residents along the River Exe frontage, ie Ferry Rd, the Strand and Riversmeet will remember the storms of early 2014, when over 40 properties were flooded. Since then, many of those in the most vulnerable locations have invested in flood defences, usually some form of boarding to protect their property. Well, time moves on, although we have not had a serious flood incident since 2014, there have been a number of close calls, leading the Emergency Group to believe that it is a matter of when, not if, that flooding happens again.
In 2015, the Emergency Group led an exercise to test deployment of flood defences, and now in 2019 we would like to do this again. The 2015 exercise established that around 50% of properties were protected from floods, one of the objectives of the exercise will be to see by how much this proportion has increased? We are always looking to increase the number of houses that need property protection so advice and guidance will be available.
The selected date is Thursday 26th September, just in advance of a week of high tides, including the highest tides of the year, 4.6m, due on both the Sunday and Monday evenings. If there is any threat of flooding, then residents will be encouraged to leave their defences in place. The exercise will act as a timely reminder for residents to consider their flood defence arrangements, and to allow practice to find (!) and assemble their defences in slow time.
Topsham has a number of trained Flood Wardens, they will be on hand to encourage residents to put up their own flood defences, giving assistance when needed. The exercise is scheduled for between 5 – 6pm. It will be a good test of our readiness to respond locally to an emergency flood situation.
We have made good progress with installing property level protection in the 5 years since 2014. We are now looking closely at the possibility of flood barriers to protect community interests at strategic locations along the Strand and Ferry Rd as a ‘front line’ of protection. We are conducting this work along side Exeter City Council and the Environment Agency and are hoping to have sufficient progress to have an ‘open evening’ to discuss options later in the Autumn.
