Source: Le Courrier Australien
URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/161736721
Date: 28/03/1947
Event: "Scotland is thus cut off from England by snow and ice"
Credit: Le Courrier Australien, Trove (National Library of Australia)
LE COURRIER AUSTRALIEN - MAR 28, 1947
Flood Damage in Britain
From our London Correspondent
While the north of England and Scotland are still engulfed in deep snow with drifts to which we have now become accustomed, the south is now in flood. Scotland is thus cut off from England by snow and ice. One train, which normally does a certain journey in three hours, took three days and then had to be dug out.
Road transport is held up and whenever a road is freed it is opened first to priority traffic only. Unfortunately, the road is often closed up again by further snow drifts. The snow is so deep in some places that it is possible to hang coats on the top of telegraph poles while working on digging operations.
In the south, however, the hold-up is caused by floods. One can travel from London to Bristol and see practically nothing but huge lakes with only upper stories and chimney pots emerging. Lorries and cars have been lost. Rivers have widened to three times their normal size and have risen many feet above the usual level.
Fields under water are in some places so affected that even after the floods subside it will mean weeks before they can be worked. As the time for planting and working the ground is now passing fast, there will be inevitable losses. Starving sheep and cattle have already been shot, though aeroplanes have sometimes dropped loads of hay in an attempt to help the poor beasts enraged with hunger.
A gale that blew across England left a trail of devastation in its wake. Houses were blown down, trees uprooted and roads blocked. Over a dozen people lost their lives in various parts of the country when buildings collapsed. With the gale came heavy rain which flooded the countryside still further.
Despite all the bad weather, however, more coal is being moved. Pits are open on Sundays in South Wales and other parts, and very genuine efforts are being made to increase production, too.
The suggestion of a night shift throughout industry to ease the strain on the power system has given way to the proposal that two day shifts should operate, one commencing at 7 a.m. and the second at a time later in the day, taking it into the evening. Nothing has yet been settled. In the meantime, work has been resumed at the factories and there is a promise of the floods receding.