Flooding at Pooley Bridge, Cumbria December 2015

[@miketongue]

Excellent video which shows the before and after. My heart goes out to everyone affected.

[@UsefulWisdom]

Thank you for your comment and appreciation of the video. I have just watched the news and there was further flooding at the village of Glenridding last night. Glenridding is at the other end of Ullswater, the lake that flows into Pooley Bridge. Lets hope it stops raining soon.

[@kaceyegan8586]

Really helps me with geography

[@UsefulWisdom]

Kacey Egan, it should help you with your science, meteorology and physics. Murphy's fourth law of motion states, nature wins every time. Good luck with your exams.

[@Squarerig]

I wish you all well in the face of such tribulation.Let us hope for better weather asap!

[@UsefulWisdom]

+Squarerig Thank You, and I hope you and everybody out their have a happy, healthy, prosperous and dry new year (unless your in one of those places that need rain).

[@techdavey3486]

Oh what a surprise (NOT) Cumberland Highways used to be infamous for poor workmanship. One case involved a right hand bend just before Pooley Bridge. The cornering forces of thousands of vehicles had worn a hollow in the road and the hollow would pond with rainwater. One night a colleague was driving that road but the water had frozen so just where the tyres needed a lot of grip there was ice. The car went straight on and flew into a wood where it hit a huge tree head-on. There were no seat belts in those days so IMHO the man is lucky to be alive (the back axle moved forward by at least a foot, the propeller shaft was Z shaped and the floor of the car had buckled-up to resemble the Big Dipper) Another write-off thanks to Cumberland Highways involved their re-aligning of a road. The new road had not yet had its white line painted but the old road which was now a lay-by that was filled with pallet-loads of kerbstones, still had its white line! There was thick fog so the driver had wound down the window and was steering by watching the white line. All of a sudden BANG! as his Mini went straight into a pile of kerbstones.

[@UsefulWisdom]

+Tech Davey Very interesting, talking of poor workmanship, I noticed on the video that there was no molter showing between the blocks on the bridge. No wonder it collapsed.

[@Dragon34th]

Given the long historical flood rap sheet of these ares & knowing that it's not gonna get better, realistically, the money being spent on made in China cowboy flood barriers here could easily be spent on the morphology of a new city uphill but you know what? Unfortunately, people do hold onto the microcosm into which they were born with the grip of a rottweiler so yea, they're gonna wanna stay here & pretend it's gonna get better after all, this is just a bad x mass. It's not :)

[@UsefulWisdom]

+Franck Yan Nothing is as easy as it first appears. For a start the village of Pooley Bridge was built where it is because the river and the lake dictated where a bridge could be built, that was 150 years ago. The bridge was then a focus point for transport and the village of Pooley Bridge developed because of this. The lake river and the bridge have been good for the development and prosperity of the village. To move this village up hill is an interesting concept, however Pooley Bridge is in the Lake District National Park and the NationalParks planning rules would not allow this. Interestingly many of the towns, cities and villages that have flooded in the UK were built were they are because of the rivers that flow through them. These rivers were used by industry to create power and water was needed for life and transport. Even now these rivers are an amenity and an asset to the community. Flood defenses need to be engineered in a sympathetic way to the environment. We need to work with nature, not against it. To move everything is impracticable. However, the building of new homes on land that is prone to flooding is wrong and needs to be stopped, unless the developers find a solution to protect the properties they want to build.