Water Water Everywhere and Droughts In Summer

Its been an interesting weekend with the weather and many of us who do a lot of off road driving and are members of various off road clubs collaborate to form another emergency rescue service, we are all volunteers and we use our own vehicles and finance it all ourselves, but many of us collaborate in certain conditions to help others and Friday was another example, but instead of winds it was water, and as we finished work at dinnertime I was looking forwards to getting things done at home; but the best laid plans of mice and men!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The telephone rang and another member asked if I had seen the news and mentioned they had been approached by a sister club to bring our 4X4's and help with a rescue effort as all clubs in Yorkshire and Derbyshire were putting out a call for us all to assist with the flooding and if my Unimog was fitted for deep water wading, which it was, and my kit was thrown into the Mog and they came to my house and we had a convoy heading for Derbyshire where a local 4X4 club were setting up a base for operations and it was near the top of the hill, and we all rendevouzed there and we met the fire brigade liaison who was thankful for our help and had done this before and knew the score. One portable mast was erected and we were issued with radios and our vehicles logged to a radio and out came the map which is a huge plastic coated map of the area and our liaison got the latest updated and the chess pieces were put onto the map, this includes every vehicle and its location, its destination, water flows and water breaches, and anticipated travel of flow and the most likely routes to gain access to areas, and which are most likely to get cut off.

Other 4X4's were sent to other parts of the area to assist and stuck to high ground.

Our first task was to measure water depths in vulnerable areas and measure their depth and if the water is rising or receeding and relay this information back and this gave liaison chance to contact other fire brigade units and evacuate their vehicles if they were at risk or tell them to evacuate before they became trapped by rising water levels and become worthless, and many fire engines were evacuated, next we removed any stranded vehicles by pulling them out and dumping them anywhere so the routes which were to remain open would be clear and could remain open until the water levels cut them off. Then the farmers came en masse and we hauled a lot of people out of flooded areas who were at risk and took them beyond the water where other 4X4's gathered them and took them to safety and back we went to fetch more along with the farmers tractors who had trailers fitted and we got everyone out who was at risk.

I had the short tipping body on with a Hi-ab between the body and cab and the evening rush hour began and the prize idiots began vying for tw*t driver of the month and there was no shortage of takers as countless vehicles simply sped into deep water and hydrauliced their engines, this is when they drive into water so deep it sucks water into their engines and locks them up solid and they are scrap, after making many of these idiots get out of their vehicles, one of the two firemen with me would drag my winch rope out and put a sling around the car and attach it to my winch rope. I had the 15 tonne hydraulic winch on the front and they were simply dragged out and lifted with the Hiab and dropped out of the way and I wasn't too careful about it. Unsurprisingly around 3/4 of them were Audi's which doesn't surprise me as many of them seem to think they walk on water, but thinking their cars will glide across deep water is a new one on me.

Work continued with sand and sandbags being dropped into my bed and I was asked if the Mog could pull a 20 tonne farm trailer which it could and I towed a trailer full of stone and went to my prescribed area and tipped the stone and sand so sand bags could be filles and placed in a position to stop another breach and a tractor following me has a trailer of stone and a front loading bucket to lift the stone and drop it at the back of the sandbags to give them more weight and resistance to the flood defences.

Then it happened, well it had to, one prize plum of a woman slipped past the Lice roadblocks with her dog and stood by the dip with the deep water which was getting deeper, and as I passed back through it on my way back for another load, the radio crackled into life, another tractor on his way down with a livestock trailer reported this prize idiot stood in front of him and tried to stop him and began moaning about the bow waves vehicles were creating, he stopped but I wouldn't, I would have run her over and reversed back over her to make sure I hit her and flattened her. I went back with another load of sand on the bed and stopped as I went through the water and measured the depth which was rising and was at 47" which is nearly at my limit for wading and more than the tractors could cope with. my limit is 48" and this is the limit I can drive through and stop without issues, I can go through much deeper water if I push a bow wave and don't stop and have done so on many occasions.

With everyone safely back at our RV point we had a nice surprise, a local garage owner had contacted his fuel supplier and they agreed to us all filling up at his garage for free and he wasn't phased by the fact mine holds 360 litres, thank you Total, we filled up and called it a night (or morning).

Saturday was interesting as this woman reappeared again and someone identified her as someone who thought she was something special and another described her as another superficial nimby, the sort with a fur coat and no knickers, the sort with a big car on the drive and no food in the fridge and we all got the picture, and I volunteered to go down first and I did, as I did a circuit and turned round I hit the water at speed and created a huge wave of about 8-9' and it hit her full bore and knocked her off her feet, straight into the water, hope they caught that on camera, and the bonus was I also got one of the Lice and drenched him. Much of Saturday saw the Mog running heaters and dehumidifiers, large diesel pumps, and containers of diesel for the pumps which had been running all night as I had the Hiab fitted and could lift them off.

Great story assassin, and one that isn’t even fictitious!

And we’ll done for your efforts. It’s great that people like you are willing to chip in during National times of need.

Hi Mr Blue, we always do and we have groups of 4X4 club members who help people out and usually this is in heavy snowfalls or high winds where trees are blown over, having extensively equipped 4X4's and experienced drivers means we can get when others cannot. We winch fallen trees to clear roads, recover stranded vehicles, carry drinks and plug in kettles with water (filtered of course) and even take staff to work in hospitals and doctors surgeries.

Then we face the environmentalists who complain about us having 4X4's, them being diesel engined, the anti 4X4 brigade which includes the ramblers association who conveniently forget about incidents where we have recovered some of their members who have had accidents, then call a helicopter to recover them and transported them to the helicopter in our 4X4's to get urgent medical assistance.

Top man.

And 'ignorance is bliss' as they say (the environmentalists...). Bless them, most if not all rarely help their cause or go the right way about it, do they...

Well done assassin, the country need people like you cos lets face it, this s**t government wont help OUR people out!!!!!
My manager has a house in Spain, back in September they had a major disaster with rain fall and everyone that could help helped, the difference is they have a consortium that help pay and get the peoples lives back together as its a national disaster! What do we get? SFA! except some jumped up politician sending out thoughts and well wishes!! What is that going to do to help? It makes me sick! God bless to all the people affected that you and others helped and long live the 4x4’s screw the activists!!!!!

Sharpysparky

This guy "Rambling Bry"
Mentions the cleaning of Gullies  in his video.
Along with dredging the Rivers , is there not a possible Class Actiopn that could be bought ?


The rest of the video is a bit off topic.

Quite possibly SOTS, they have reduced the services but not the price we pay and if you buy 4 Mars bars for £1 you don't expect to pay £1 for one Mars bar.

We also had the gulley cleaners around four times per year when I was small and we also followed them and were fascinated by them and they used to let us pull the string to lower them into the drains while they were sucked out, now they are full of wood, leaves, stones, and anything else from the roads. This is now compounded by repairing roads on the cheap where they spray a layer of tar onto the roads and top it with chippings, a large number of which never bond to the road and where do they end up? down the sewers and compound the problem.

In much the same way as they neglect sewers and they become partially blocked with fatbergs and lose their ability to flow, and they only ever clean them when they are nearly blocked, and as a considerable amount of rainwater goes into them, they cannot cope and drain water away effectively. When we do get a surface drain overwhelmed and it is a 12' sewer with a 6' fatberg in it, it severely restricts its flow and if it overflows it brings up all the sewage trapped behind the fatberg and contaminates the flood water.

In much the same way they don't send road sweepers round anymore as these cleaned up many of the leaves and stones which go into the sewers instead of being swept up and disposed of correctly.