Villagers preparing early for extreme weather

VILLAGERS have begun stepping up their resilience plans for extreme weather — after a recent flooding episode in Haugh of Urr.

Various business owners and community councils are preparing for increasing levels of rainfall to prevent as much damage as possible.

Castle Douglas and Crocketford Councillor Pauline Drysdale raised the issue at last week’s Stewartry area committee, and asked questions of fire service chiefs attending the meeting.

Councillor Drysdale said: “A lot of our own communities are preparing resilience plans ready for the weather we’re experiencing at the moment, and we’re going to experience increasing rainfall.

“Last week we had another flood in the Haugh of Urr. The pub was affected and we had to get sandbags out because the council vehicle wasn’t available.

“So they reacted as quickly as they could and they were extremely effective. But I’m just wondering how much you, as a fire service, get involved in flooding because I know in the past we’ve had to call you out for incidents in Castle Douglas.

“You’ve been fantastic and really helpful but that’s only as a last resort. So I’m just wondering if in some future reports we could have something on this as to how the fire brigade are involved with the council in pumping out drains etc when they’re blocked.”

Chris Ross, commander for the Stewartry, replied: “With regards to flooding, we do have more of a slight responsibility but it’s more of a life issue – life risk.

“At the moment, we don’t have a statutory duty to pump out properties. In fact, we don’t even have the equipment for that, which would require low level pumps. We no longer have those resources.

“But we do train in what we call flood response levels, which allows our crews to wade and affect rescues if people are still in properties which are impacted by flooding.

“At Dumfries and Newton Stewart, and other surrounding stations, we do have a higher level of water rescue capability, which is more for fast flowing rivers.

“But there’s a bit of a grey area around when it comes to flooding and responsibility around pumping out people’s properties – people who are not entirely at risk themselves.”