Englishman builds wall around home after years of flooding
Nick Lupton's riverside home in Worcester, England, has been flooded nearly a dozen times in just seven years. To stop it, he built a massive wall that surrounds his home.
Lupton and his wife, Annie, have lived near the River Severn in a 17th-century house on property worth more than $765,000, according to local news outlet Gloucestershire Live. And since 2016, their one acre of land and home has flooded 11 times, Lupton told multiple news agencies.
Exhausted by the multiple clean-ups they have had to do over the years, Lupton and his wife spent spent months building a wall to protect their home in the high-risk flood zone, he told CBS News partner BBC.
"After we had, I think it was nine floods, before we decided to build a wall," Lupton told Reuters. "And the wall is really there to make our lives easier, but also to protect the house long term. Having flood water up to the walls of a house is never going to be good."
They finished the wall mid-September, and when it was put to the test a month later by a flood, Lupton said it stood up to the challenge – and continues to do so.
"Thankfully it did what it was supposed to do. It passed the test," he said, adding that it also helped prevent damage when it was tested again this week. "... It's been a very good test in many ways because it's one of the highest floods we've ever had."
There are hundreds of flooding alerts across England as of Friday afternoon local time, including more than 250 warnings that flooding is expected, and nearly 270 more saying flooding is possible. The U.K.'s Met Office has warned that the River Severn is expected to have flooding impacts through at least Friday and Saturday, although it could continue for "several days" in some parts.
Of the 30 measuring stations across the river, 18 recorded "high" levels on Friday, with the measuring station in Worcester recording a height of 18.2 feet and rising as of 4:30 p.m. local time on Friday – just shy of the all-time station record of 18.99 feet recorded in 2020. The normal range of water levels at this location is between 1.8 and 11 feet.
Lupton believes there are "a lot of factors" playing into the flooding at his home – including climate change.
Winters in the United Kingdom are "projected to become warmer and wetter on average," the Met Office says on its website, adding that within 50 years, winter will be up to 4.5 degrees Celsius warmer and up to 30% wetter.
"Heavy rainfall is also more likely," the office says. "Since 1998, the UK has seen six of the ten wettest years on record. The winter storms in 2015 were at least 40% more likely because of climate change. ... Parts of the U.K. will be in danger of flooding, with low lying and coastal cities at particular risk."
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