Three weeks on from Storm Franklin and the landscape is still scarred.
The storm saw the River Mersey's levels rise to an all time high, putting hundreds of homes in south Manchester at risk.
But the opening of Didsbury's floodgates diverted the water over the green spaces which make up part of Didsbury Flood Storage Reservoir, like Fletcher Moss Park, saving people's properties from being deluged.
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The emergency action left Fletcher Moss waterlogged and littered with wreckage. Pathways have been washed away, memorial benches have been displaced, and debris covers the boardwalk.
Meanwhile, damage has been done to the landscape's infrastructure as the Environment Agency had to fell trees to help the flow of flood water. Restoring the landscape will be a significant task - and volunteers believe that the damage could have been minimised with better planning.
A spokesperson for the Friends of Fletcher Moss Park said: “This is the third year of the park flooding.
“Before that, it was a very rare event and it only became a flood basin in the 1970s. We now anticipate that this may now be a yearly event with global warming.
“The problem this year is that the Environment Agency took down a lot of trees in one section below houses in order to increase the flow of the water.
“They felled an awful lot, they chopped a lot of trees down - 40 or 50 trees in order to increase the flow of the water, but increasing the flow of water has caused a lot more damage. They were protecting the houses above, and we get that.
“But if that woodland had been managed properly where they had taken away growth underneath and saplings, they wouldn’t be chopping 50 year-old trees down. The pathways that lead to the boardwalk have been completely destroyed and that’s only a few weeks after they were repaired from last year where the damage wasn’t very great.
“What we really want to do is talk to the council and the Environment Agency about creating pathways and such that aren't going to wash away every year."
Currently, there is confusion over who is responsible for Fletcher Moss Park in instances such as the clear up after a storm.
Manchester Council say that clean up operations after a storm are split between the council and the Environment Agency and, in the immediate aftermath of Storm Franklin, there were 40 urgent clean up jobs and 300 other clean up jobs dealt with.
However, the Friends of Fletcher Moss Park, who are an unfunded volunteer group, say there is more to be done and that they are unsure about who is responsible.
“Apart from the damage that has been done to parts of the boardwalk, there are benches lying about that have been floating on the flood waters.
“They need to be, in some way, secured to the ground in the future, these are benches people have paid for because they love Fletcher Moss Park and somebody has died and they want to remember that person.
“We know that these things happen, in the long term what needs to happen is they need to be looking up in the hills to find out what’s causing this water to be in the Mersey.
“Really, that’s a long term issue, how to prevent water coming down the Mersey to threaten people’s homes in the first place.”
Didsbury Sports Ground, at Ford Lane nearby, was also swamped following the opening of the floodgates. Its facilities were flooded, with the water reaching the first floor bar and restaurant.
Clive Szmit, the director of Didsbury Sports Ground, says he hopes that this round of severe weather will reopen a conversation with the Environment Agency and the council about protecting the land.
He wants to discuss Didsbury Sports Ground's contract for the land's use as a floodplain, because of the frequency of events.
“First of all, the Environment Agency told us we were a floodplain prior to it happening. We had to agree to a set of circumstances and they have a level that they’ve agreed the water goes up to," he said.
“Having had a look at the contract last night, it seems to have gone up considerably over the last few times - and also nobody agreed the amount of times this would happen.
“They gave us a ballpark figure of once every eight years that [flooding] would happen, this is happening every year now. We’ve just made contact now to the Environmental Agency to re-discuss this contract.
"It was made years ago by people who are no longer here, any monies that were paid to us have since gone, no real protection was put in place.
“To be fair to the Environment Agency, if we don’t explain it, if we don’t sit and talk then and negotiate with them then they’re not going to volunteer if they know there's a problem.”
The flooding will put the pitches out of use for at least two months, and swamped a recently-refurbished bar.
“It is devastating," he said. "We’ve recently put a restaurant in and a bar and it’s open to the community, we opened it up in May.
“The flood levels have never gone above the first floor (before) - that’s why all of the electrics are moved up to a higher level and everything downstairs is purely storage.
“So it’s never gone anywhere near the bar level, we’ve spent thousands and thousands making sure we’ve got a stainless steel bar, beautiful floors, nice decor and all sorts of new technology, and unfortunately, on this occasion, it’s gone above that and is in the bar. Then you have the additional problems that we have.
“We have rugby teams, 600 members, we have 10 adult football teams, we have a vets team (veterans), then we have lots and lots of children.
“We have about 100 children down there on a Saturday morning, we have round about 200 on a Sunday all playing rugby or football. Then we have the cricket, we also have frisbee, netball and we’ve got now the park runners.
“You can imagine that’s thousands and thousands of young and old people who are active, now inactive. So that’s the real damage, we’re trying to pump it out now, but the pitches are so wet.
“The pitches will be out of use for at least two months and that’s only if it stops raining, they’re not just wet, there’s been a river on them. We’re looking at two months downtime and then of course if you’ve not got the sports, then we’ve not got the bar and we’ve got no income.
“It’s not just about clearing up, it’s about making it safe for the public and making it safe for young people to play sport and for young and old people to come in and drink and eat in the establishment."
Fearing the prospect of annual flooding, Clive wants the council and the Environmental Agency to help with forward planning.
He said: “They’ve got to communicate with us, that’s the first thing. They should be reaching out, saying this is what’s available to you.
“To be fair, we can take some blame, we need to be proactive in asking for more things. We can’t blame the council, we can’t blame the Environmental Agency if we’re not asking.
“It turns out that the level [of flooding] that was agreed, we are so close to it, we’re trying to get to the bottom of whether it went over it or not.
“Because, of course, if it’s gone above the level we agreed then we get some good compensation, which would really help.
“The one thing I’ll be saying is, we’re living in a new world of climate change so it doesn’t matter what things we’ve agreed and what we’ve not agreed, what’s contractually agreed.
“Things change, the world is changing, climate change is huge. Of course, they didn’t expect this to happen, the council didn’t expect this to happen so we’re not putting blame on anyone.
“We’re just saying the world’s changing and these things need to be reviewed regularly. The solution they had, it’s simply not working and it might work to save the houses, don’t get me wrong, we saved 500 houses and that is fantastic.”
Over the last twelve months the Mersey at Didsbury has varied between 2.56m and 7.18m; when the previous range was between 2.59m and 4.70m. During Storm Franklin, the River Mersey at the Didsbury Basin reached 7.23m.
Paul O’Hare, a senior lecturer in Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University told the M.E.N: “For decades we believed, as a society, that the infrastructure that was constructed generations ago would provide plenty of protection and as long as it worked, we didn’t pay it any attention.
“But what these new events have shown, particularly the event last January (Storm Christoph) has demonstrated a number of things, it’s demonstrated, I think, and I can be confident about this - the implications of climate change.
“Until now, climate scientists have been a bit coy about saying that but I think I’ve really noticed in the last two years the language is much more confident now, from climate scientists, about saying climate change is here and we need to begin to take it very seriously, very quickly.
“We’re using the infrastructure more than we anticipated it would have to be used.
“If the climate scientists’ models are accurate, we will be using it in that way in the future more frequently. Certainly more frequently than we have done in the past.
“The past couple of storms are an indicator, I think, of what might come.
“It was said at that point the Didsbury basin came within millimetres of being over topped. It was specifically mentioned in a Manchester City Council report.”
The report Paul is referring to is the 'agenda document for environment and climate change scrutiny committee' from November 11 2021, which stated:
“The recent Storm Christoph in January this year threatened widespread flooding across Greater Manchester with the river Mersey reaching unprecedented levels and resulting in the evacuation of 3000 properties across Didsbury and Northenden.
“The flood waters peaked at approximately 5am on Thursday 21st January. They did not breach the flood basin, however, they did come within millimetres of doing so.”
Last year, it was reported that the Mersey reached its highest ever recorded level. This year, the river once again broke records and reached a new highest ever recorded level.
Paul added: “We’ve got to do all we can to mitigate climate change so, beating emissions, but we do have to keep an eye on the infrastructure that has kept many communities throughout the country safe for a very long time.
“My fear is that [flood protection infrastructure] will start to reach what is referred to as their adaptive capacity, their ability to perform as they’re designed.
“Even if the most recent couple of storms, from last January and the one just past in February, even if they weren’t directly driven by climate change they’re an indicator of what climate change will bring.
“We should be prepared for [storms] to happen more commonly than what they have done in the past. They’re on an upwards trajectory, they’ll be more frequent and they’ll be more intense.
“I think the word unprecedented should be struck off of vocabulary when we’re talking about these things because if I see another unprecedented storm, I think I’ll give up.
“They’re always referred to as unprecedented, no, they’re precedented. We know that they’re coming. We’ve been told it for years, we’ve ignored it for years and we’re beginning now to see what the future might hold.”
Even with the floodgates being opened, roads in south Manchester were closed by Storm Franklin.
Palatine Road was closed in both directions due to flooding from the M60 flyover to Withington Golf Club and Ford Lane was closed due to flooding.
And properties all around the Mersey in south Manchester - East Didsbury, West Didsbury and Northenden - were said to be at risk from flooding.
In Northenden, some residents at the Boat Lane Court retirement complex near Ford Lane, were potentially saved from a full scale evacuation due to the opening of the Didsbury floodgates.
Despite this, emergency evacuation measures were still in place and some residents decided to evacuate to Didsbury Islamic Centre, with a back up centre at the Armitage Sports Centre in Fallowfield.
Gaynor Davis, manager at Boat Lane Court, explained how, having evacuated residents last year amid Storm Christoph, the residential complex has a system in place to deal with flooding in the area.
“We have to evacuate the premises as a team, because there’s a danger to life," she said.
“My view is, a lot of people here, it takes them time to get their medications ready, process the information, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
“I have a viewpoint as a manager, if the council tells me there’s danger to life, then I have a duty of care and responsibility.
“The owners actually own their apartments, so I can’t force them to leave, but I also can’t put staff and vulnerable people at risk - unless they choose to.
“That’s always a difficult choice in this job, if people have capacity and choose to make a decision that you don’t agree with, they have the right to do that.
“We try to be proactive rather than reactive and my view is after last time when we had to be reactive and were here until 5 o’clock in the morning trying to evacuate people late at night in the snow, wasn’t a sensible option.
“I think the council were slightly more prepared this time, last time we were driving people, we enlisted family to come and take everybody out of here.
“This time, interestingly, (residents) didn’t go to a hotel and it seemed that they were more delighted, but we did have half of our owners who decided to stay.
“From our perspective, it couldn’t have gone any better, at any point, we didn’t feel like we were at any risk.”
One of the owners who decided to stay at Boat Lane court was Pat Hughes, 64.
She said: “Well, I didn’t think the water would reach us, in fact I knew the water wouldn’t reach us.
“I think the problem was more if the services went off, the electric and gas, which is why I evacuated the dog and not me because I didn’t want to trip over him in the dark.
“I didn’t think that there was any threat to life, and I’m a lot more able bodied than some of the people here.
“I packed a bag, just in case anyone said ‘you have to evacuate’, but no, I was okay. I’d already been down to the river with the dog for a walk and I knew it wasn’t going to reach us."
Other residents decided to evacuate for a variety of reasons, one resident Joan Robertson, 90, decided to leave because of her age, meanwhile Dulcie Green, 88, decided to evacuate because her home is on the ground floor of the complex and her friend Susan Warwick, 69, had agreed to leave.
Describing their evacuated evening, Joan said: “You know what? It’s the best night I’ve had for years.
“I just kept laughing for ages.”
Another resident, Eneida Valencia, 74, decided to stay with friends for the night, said this time residents were more prepared. But she is already concerned about what the future holds.
“They must do something about the river, they have to do something," she said.
“Because it’s now happening almost every year.”
Tracey Pook, a community engagement coordinator at Didsbury Mosque, stayed at the Mosque through the night with those who had been evacuated.
"The river got to it's all time high, ever recorded, does that mean that next time it’s going to burst its banks?
“It’s not fair on that community, it’s not fair on the people who have to live in the threat of a river flooding.
“What are they going to do if it floods next year? It got to its highest ever level.”
Despite her worries about the future of flood management in Didsbury, Tracey describes the night of the evacuation fondly.
She said: “I know that sounds quite bizarre but we laughed and laughed and laughed, so much honestly.
“When we knew it was going to happen, we set up one of the large rooms that was at the back of the mosque. We set up Netflix, refreshments, we had the sofas out, tables ready.
“Red Cross came in and they had blankets ready and first aid kits and a defib, Manchester City Council kept coming in and making sure everyone was okay and did we need anything - and we didn’t.
“It just goes to show, when the team came together, we have such a great team here at the mosque, we were able to create something absolutely fantastic out of something which was worrying and negative for those involved.”
The sluice gate at Didsbury basin was opened as far back as January 20 to divert water from the Mersey onto the flood plains.
Describing how defences and flood gates had protected 18,500 homes, despite record river levels in the north west, Jamie Dixon said: “The Environment Agency has worked around the clock, supporting communities at risk during Storm Dudley, Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin.
“Teams operated defences and flood gates across Greater Manchester and other affected areas in the North West.
“In Didsbury alone, the flood basin protected 3000 properties and acted as designed.
“Didsbury Basin has been in operation since 1978, and is used when water levels in the River Mersey become too high.
“The basin is maintained on a priority basis by our operational teams and is regularly checked to ensure its capability is up to standard.
“When the basin is at capacity, it is still actively reducing flood risk by containing water by delaying this volume reaching the river system.
“Fletcher Moss Park is part of the flood basin that protected 3000 homes from flooding last week.
“The primary aim of the basin is to protect communities and properties from flooding, however we understand people’s concerns and will work with partners in the future to try and limit impacts.
“We know the devastating impact flooding can have, which is why we encourage people to check their risk online, sign up for flood warnings and know what to do in a flood.”
Manchester City Council has been contacted for comment.
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