Hi,I really enjoyed reading the thread! The whole of Cumbria was really badly affected by the floods, although I must say that the Local Authority and Emergency Services coped brilliantly. Each County Council has a 'gold' level disaster response team, which moves into the Recovery Phase immediately after.
I was crashed out (we have folk held at readiness for deployments around the world) to build the bridge in Workington earlier this month - well I was the Project Manager for the whole scheme, with about 90 Royal Engineers under my command as the design team and contractor. You might have seen me on the BBC news. I almost took my G4, but decided against it!
It was a great job, extremely challenging in only 12 days, cost around £1.5M, was on a saturated flood plain and in a devastated area. Probably the best job that I have done in 24 years as an an engineer in the Army (including Iraq and Afghanistan). The people in Workington and Cumbria were really on side and treated us very well.
A couple of pictures below. If you want to help with this kind of thing - I think raising cash would be best, or delivering emergency relief (blankets,clothes, food etc) might be best. Either way, it should be co-ordinated into the Local Authority plans. It was amazing to see such devastation in our own country - I have seen it first hand in Bosnia and Sudan, but I did not expect to see it in Cumbria.
Rob
