From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/world/europe/accustomed-to-floods-but-nothing-like-this-in-southern-england.html?hp&_r=3
MUCHELNEY, England — The village of Muchelney has become an island. Cars stand idle; locals canoe across the flooded plain or take a police boat down the road-turned-river connecting them to what they now call the “mainland.” About halfway, a silver sedan bobs in the water, its roof barely protruding. It has been there for five weeks.
Even by Britain’s rain-soaked standards it has been a wet winter. For several parts of the country, it was the wettest January on record, and it is still raining. Large swaths of southern England remain on flood alert. Muchelney and the adjacent hamlet of Thorney, about 120 miles southwest of London, are among the hardest hit areas — though it took the government awhile to realize this.
Roderic Baillie-Grohman, 57, was standing in knee-deep water in his living room here one recent afternoon, surveying the damage, when the phone rang. It was a recorded message from the environment agency, the British government body in charge of flood management. The flood warning has now been lifted, a cheerful voice told him, as gentle waves curled around his rubber waders.
“I nearly burst out laughing,” said Mr. Baillie-Grohman, a stonemason, who recounted the scene this week.
Other bureaucratic blunders have been less amusing. When the water first rose on Jan. 3, it flooded not just homes but septic tanks, making it impossible to flush toilets. It took the local government authority three and a half weeks to send portable chemical toilets to the village, Mr. Baillie-Grohman said.
Until then, he said, “it was plastic bags.” Showers have been rationed and cold, and the use of washing machines — those not destroyed by the flood — discouraged to avoid adding to the water table.
Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/world/europe/accustomed-to-floods-but-nothing-like-this-in-southern-england.html?hp&_r=3
