Residents urge faster flood action from authorities

Residents in Somerset are urging the authorities to act faster and communicate better when the county is faced with flooding.

The Met Office issued a yellow warning for rain on Thursday night and another is in place from now until 06:00 on Saturday. Somerset Council declared a major incident earlier this week and said further flooding was possible, particularly in Moorland, Saltmoor and Currymoor.

Although pumps have been temporarily installed to clear water, locals said they were not brought in fast enough.

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency (EA) said: "When we're very stretched across the county as we are at the moment, we don't always get everything perfectly right."

Although river levels have dropped, they remain high and the moors are continuing to fill, the council has said.

The EA has 16 active flood warnings across the county as the saturated ground poses a flood risk. There are a further 24 flood alerts in place.

The council said extra pumps, equipment and staff had been deployed to deal with ongoing flooding.

Six pumps are in place at Northmoor and two more were deployed on Thursday.

Temporary pumps are also in place at Saltmoor and Elson's Clyce.

Other options to move water out of the wider river catchment area were also being considered, such as using the Sowy flood relief channel.

The EA said it would "closely" monitor rainfall over the coming days.

Bryony Sadler is part of the Flooding on the Levels Action Group (Flag) group that has been campaigning for better management of the water system for 12 years.

She said the flooding had come in "ridiculously fast" this year, with some fields and roads going underwater in 36 hours.

"The reaction against the rainfall isn't quick enough. We need much more impact, quicker," she told BBC Radio Somerset.

She said that hundreds of people sought help and advice from Flag on Thursday ahead of forecast rain as they were still fearful after the devastating Somerset floods of 2014.

"We are living and breathing this and [the authorities] need to be talking to us and taking what we're saying.

"The mixed messages and terrible communication has scared people to death… it's not fair.

"This has been immense. The amount of water we've had has been loads. It could have been a slicker operation," she added.

Georgia Thompson said her home of Stoke St Gregory had become "a bit of an island" following the flooding.

Although she was only 14 during the 2014 floods, she has memories of her difficult journeys to and from school and the fear caused.

"The fear is now that the community still feels like there's been a massive lack of communication, same as 2014," she said.

"As a community, everyone pulls together quite well, but there are older people as well that rely on things like public transport, their deliveries coming in, being able to go and collect prescriptions and things like that.

"For them, they're not being communicated with, they're having to check social media or ask a neighbour to because they don't have it themselves."

Ian Withers, from the EA, said: "In declaring a major incident this week, it means that actually we should be working much more closely and meeting the needs of these communities better.

"But the communities themselves do have a really important role to play in making sure that all that nervous energy is converted into something positive and they are able to respond and prepare for flooding.

"That's how we are going to become a much more resilient nation to the kind of changing climate conditions that we're seeing."

He added that the agency would continue to liaise with the community.

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