A year and 8 hours
The tragedy in Valencia should be a wake up call to us all in Europe that natural disasters are not just something that happen to Third World countries or those living in the tropics.
In the parched mountains of Valencia a year’s rainfall fell in 8 hours.
Just think about that and then consider this, what would happen in the UK if one day a year’s rain fell on the Pennines, the Peak District, the North York Moors, the Surry Hills or the Cairngorms?
Which water company do you think has built the capacity to deal with that, to funnel all that water safely to the sea, save all those city centres and hundreds of people?
Any coming to mind? No, me neither.
We are lucky we don’t border the Med, which is becoming a boiling kettle of unpredictable, extreme, weather but we are not immune.
You have been warned, for all the good it will do.
Not only is there very little pressure to do anything, but there is not the money nor the political will.
We now know full well the water companies have invested nothing like enough to keep our rivers clean and our beaches usable, what chance is there, do you think, that they have spent enough on preparing for extreme weather?
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Most of the scumbags have spent more on dividends and bonuses than on investment (and now they want us all to pay shedloads more in bills for investments that should have happened years ago).
Water privatisation hasn't delivered what we need, but the Valencia example illustrates the problems of adapting to a volatile climate. If we are to design our systems to cope variously with months of drought and a years rainfall in a day, resilience must take
precedence over daily efficiency on a massive scale. This means living with a lot of resource redundancy for most of the time. At some point across the board this becomes impractical which is why there are real limits to adaptation and suffering is inevitable. Its why prevention is far better than cure.