Remembering the floods of 2000

Kent Resilience Forum
2 minutes ago
3 min read

As the county looks back on the 25th anniversary of the floods in 2000, the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum is highlighting the continued need for communities to be flood prepared, with many areas of the county remaining at high risk of similar flooding in the future.

At the end of the year 2000, many parts of England saw some of the worst flooding in living memory. The autumn of that year brought the beginning of widespread and prolonged rainfall, which was to continue into the winter and early the following year.

The Southeast did not escape the devastation. Kent and the wider Southeast experienced several large floods between 9 October 2000 and 8 November 2000 and weather records were broken.

Many towns and villages across Kent were impacted by flooding with some residents reporting that they had never seen flood water flowing with such force and speed. Hundreds of properties in the county were flooded, many of them more than once, but thankfully no loss of life was reported.

For England as a whole, autumn 2000 was the wettest since meteorological records began in 1766.

In Kent:

• September 2000 was the wettest since 1981.

• October 2000 was the wettest since 1903.

• November 2000 was the wettest since 1970.

Emma Crofts from the Environment Agency’s Southeast Flood Resilience Team said: "The very wet autumn and early winter of 2000 resulted in very high groundwater levels across the county, particularly in the east of Kent. These high groundwater levels caused chalk streams like the Nailbourne to flow full and in some places flooded homes and businesses.

"Since 2000 partnerships including the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum have been established to coordinate efforts between emergency responders, local authorities and the Environment Agency."

Emma added: "There is still a risk of flooding in many areas of Kent today. With its long coastline and significant river network, there are around 75,000 properties in Kent and Medway that are at risk of river and coastal flooding. In addition, groundwater flooding also poses a risk to many others.

"We cannot control the weather, but we can keep informed and prepare for the potential impacts."

Be prepared

The first step to being prepared is to check your flood risk and sign up for free Flood Warnings from the Environment Agency. You can check here: Check for flooding - GOV.UK

During the winter of 2000/1 a total of 323 warnings were issued for Kent to help give people time to prepare and protect their homes and families. You can sign up for free Flood Warnings today.

It is advisable to make a personal flood plan, detailing where you might go if you need to leave home, who will look after pets, how to turn off utilities and who might step in to help if you are on holiday. Here is a handy template to use PDF_of_personal_flood_plan.pdf

Local residents in areas at risk of flooding are encouraged to consider making a community flood plan to help prepare for flooding and to help reduce the impacts, with local trained volunteer flood wardens to help put those plans in place.

For more information and advice about how to prepare for flooding visit Prepare for flooding: Protect yourself from future flooding - GOV.UK or explore the Kent Prepared pages further.

These images show some of the areas across the county impacted by the 2000 floods (Photo credit Environment Agency for all uses).

Picture captions for images in order shown the gallery below: