Three people were killed and hundreds stranded on Monday as torrential downpours caused widespread chaos and the worst floods seen in northern Britain in years.
Rainstorms dumped as much as 75mm of rain on a country already soggy from an exceptionally wet June, Britain's weather office said. At one point on Monday afternoon, the Environment Agency had issued 38 flood warnings.
Several hours of effort from rescuers including police divers was not enough to save a 28-year-old man in Hull who died after becoming trapped while trying to clear a flooded drain.
Police in nearby Sheffield said they had recovered the body of an unidentified young man, though his body was found downstream from where a teenage boy was earlier reported to have been swept up by the floods.
They later confirmed that a 68-year-old man was killed in the city as he got into difficulties attempting to cross a flooded road.
Hundreds of people were stranded in Sheffield, where military and police helicopters were scrambled to help rescue people trapped in cars or taking refuge from the fast-rising floodwaters on rooftops.
"It's very difficult to get an actual understanding of how many people, but we are talking in the hundreds of people affected by this sea of flooding," emergency coordinator Flight Lieutenant Ronnie Metcalfe said.
Britain's Environment Agency, which monitors weather risks nationwide, issued 16 severe flood warnings and 102 standard flood warnings throughout the country.
Elsewhere in Britain rivers broke their banks, flooding roads and homes from Devon in southwest England, to Yorkshire in the north.
Nick Ricketts, a national forecaster at Britain's Meteorological Office, said some parts of Britain had an entire month's worth of rain just in a few hours.
The 28-year-old man died after spending four hours trapped in a burst drain on Monday. Firefighters and divers tried to rescue him after he became stuck up to his neck in water when his foot got wedged in a manhole grate.
The man, named by his employer as Mike Barnett, was thought to have been trying to clear the manhole to stop flooding. Humberside Fire and Rescue Service said the situation in the Hessle area of Hull, northeast England, was "horrible."
Witnesses described seeing Barnett becoming submerged as the water levels rose and losing consciousness as the emergency crews struggled to free him.
He was given a tube to breathe through and emergency services were said to be on the verge of amputating his foot before the freezing temperatures became too much for him and he was pronounced dead.
Barnett, who worked at a local fish farm, became trapped at about 10.30am, dying four hours later.
Meanwhile, officials in Rotherham yesterday urged residents living near Ulley Dam to leave their houses after warning the walls of the dam at the 14 hectare reservoir could break.
"We have taken professional advice from an engineer, who said there is a significant risk that the dam could fail," Rotherham Council spokeswoman Tracy Holmes said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese