AO5 Researching a Major disaster Boscastle Floods 1. Find a Google map of Boscastle to show where it is?

A shows Boscastle

2. What date did the incident happen? The Boscastle floods happened on Monday 16th August 2004, with the worst part of the flooding happening between 5:00pm and 6:00pm. 3. What actually happened? At midday on the 16th August 2004, heavy thundery showers had developed across the South West due to a weak disturbance to the northeast of the United Kingdom. This caused rain water to build up at the top of both sides of the valley, in which Boscastle sits at the bottom, and eventually caved in and ran down the roads towards the village. The floods went through the village, to the sea on the other side of the village, taking cars, houses and debris with it into the sea.

4. What were the causes of the flood? There were a few causes of the flooding. One cause was the amount of rain fall. 3mm of rain fell every hour with a months worth of rain falling in just 4 hours. Another reason is because the village is sat at the bottom of a V valley, all the rain water ran down to the bottom of the V valley into the village. 5. Try to find a rainfall gauge map of the rainfall that hit the area between 1100 and 1800 on the day of the event?

6. Find an image of the river Valency and river Jordan, why are these two rivers important in identifying the causes of the flood? These two rivers join together at the top of the Boscastle village which meant when they both overfilled with rain water, they emerged and flooded Boscastle.

7. Use the below link to access the timeline of what happened. Can you name as many of the emergency services that were deployed on that day as possible? Emergency Services deployed on the day were: Cornwall County Fire Brigade Boscastles Cliff Rescue Team Falmouth coastguard Fire services from Launceston, St Austell, Bodmin, Padstow and Truro RAF Kinloss Firefighters from Delabole Station Port Isaac Inshore Lifeboat helicopters 169 from RAF Chivenor and 193 rom RNAS Culdrose Police and helicopter Bude Inshore Lifeboat Cornwalls air ambulance Helicopters 170 from Chivenor, 180 from RAF St Mawgan and 194 from Culdrose Truro and Plymouth Hospitals Portlands Coastguard helicopter First Fire Brigade from St Ives, St Austell, Newquay, Camborne and Penzance http://www.floodwarn.co.uk/pdf/Boscastle_flood.pdf 8. Fire-fighters from which stations were mobilized to Boscastle? Fire-Fighters from Cornwall County Fire Brigade, Launceston, St Austell, Bodmin, Padstow, Truro and Delabole. 9. Which fire service was the first to arrive on the scene at Boscastle? The first to arrive on the scene were Fire-Fighters from the Cornwall County Fire Brigade, who arrived at 3:35pm. They were then joined by Launceston fire station. 10. What role did the police play in the event? How were they able to help? The first role the police had was closing all the roads in to Boscastle at 4:30pm. The police helicopter over Boscastle reported severe flooding by 4:52pm. The Police ended up in Gold Control, delegated from the Fire Service and were in charge of the rescue operation. 11. RAF helicopters were scrambled from which bases? Helicopters from RAF Kinloss, RAF Chivenor, RNAS Culdrose and RAF St Mawgan were all involved in the Boscastle floods. 12. What role did these helicopters play? The main roles of these helicopters were to look for survivors and airlift them to safety. They also passed on information to teams on the ground regarding the situation.

13. At 2100 hours fire relief crews from nearby stations were scrambled, what does this mean? The fire relief crews go to a major disaster after it has been dealt with to help save anything and anyone, and make sure it is safe for people to return. 14. During the rescue operation 6 fire fighters had to be airlifted, why do you think this was? This may be because when trying to save civilians, they could have been stuck in by the rising flood waters. 15. Life boats were scrambled from nearby Lifeguard stations why was this? This was because everything was being washed into the sea, including cars. For every car that floated out into sea, the people and the lifeboats checked for civilians. If no one was in them, they would smash the windows and let the car sink so the cars were out of the way. 16. Devon and Cornwalls constabulary identified the incident as Major and Gold control was open. What does this mean? There are 3 controls, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Gold means it is a major incident, and Bronze would be a minor. For Gold Control, one of the domestic services would be in control and tell the other public services what to do. For example, the Fire Service had Gold Control during Boscastle. 17. What Jobs did the fire fighters do on this day and after the event in the clean up operation? When the floods had died down, the fire fighters went into Boscastle, and starting looking for missing people, and clear up the streets to make it safe for people to return. 18. Watch the video link below. What do you think flash flooding means? A flash flood is a quick flooding in a certain low-built area caused by heavy rain connected with storms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrb0Ea0OkKU 19. How many casualties were there in the incident? During the whole flooding, there were, amazingly, no casualties caused by the floods. 20. How many homes were flooded? Roughly, around 100 homes were flooded and destroyed, and 6 buildings were washed completely into the sea.