
Politics
ROBERT HARDMAN on the crumbling dam in Whaley Bridge
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316279/ROBERT-HARDMAN-crumbling-dam-Whaley-Bridge.html

‘Look at all these tubes. It’s like a patient in intensive care – but then I suppose that’s what this is,’ reflects Edwina Currie, surveying the view at the back of her garden above the town of Whaley Bridge.
It was this Peak District panorama which instantly persuaded the former Tory minister to buy this place several years ago.
Today, however, the view is very different. An RAF Chinook is thundering above the treeline with six huge sacks of rocks dangling from its belly.
Each bag weighs more than a ton but the pilot tiptoes into position like a ballerina before a precision dumping operation on to the battered, hollowed out slab of concrete below.
An RAF Chinook helicopter flies in sandbags to help repair the dam at Toddbrook Reservoir near Whaley Bridge this morning
Birds-eye view: An aerial picture from the Derbyshire Constabulary shows bags of aggregate being used to cover the dam’s spillway today
Huge pipes stretch like giant straws along roads crammed with big red fire pumps, all furiously sucking thousands of gallons per second out of a mile-long pool of gravy-brown water.
At the centre of the drama is the spillway of the Toddbrook Reservoir, the weakest point in a ruptured wall which currently separates the 190-year-old man-made Derbyshire lake from the grand old mill and coal town below, not to mention the major railway passing through it.
Yesterday, the battle to keep the two apart replaced Brexit as the lead item on the Government’s agenda. Downing Street convened an emergency Cobra meeting, chaired by the new Defra Secretary, Theresa Villiers, in order to get a ministerial grip on the situation.
Last night, the gravity of the battle to save Toddbrook was underlined when the Prime Minister made a surprise flying visit.
Drone images show the damage to the dam and the empty streets of Whaley Bridge today after police ordered an evacuation
Residents watch from a nearby field as the aircraft dispatches its next load on to the dam’s broken wall. Emergency services check on the delivery from a boat nearby
Meeting residents at the local evacuation centre, Boris Johnson assured them that the dam was ‘dodgy but stable’. Quite how much solace they will have derived from his assurance that ‘you will all be properly housed’ in the event of a collapse remains to be seen. ‘I flew over the dam and it looks pretty scary. I can see the problem,’ he admitted.
He sympathised with Matthew and Lynn Lingard, fearing for the welfare of the two cockateils and two rabbits they had left behind. ‘That must be very worrying. Are you going to be able to go back and get them?’ the PM asked.
The couple said that they might have to wait another 48 hours.
Mr Johnson was clearly disturbed to learn that some residents were still refusing to leave homes which stand in the path of a breach in the dam. ‘We’ve got to sort that out,’ he told police officers. Departing amid the inevitable requests for selfies, he assured his hosts: ‘They’ve got a long way to go. Whatever we do, we’ll make sure we rebuild it.’
Though the state of the dam remains ‘critical’, according to its owners, the Canal and River Trust, the signs are that the battle is slowly being won. Water levels are now down by half a metre while the RAF has now deposited 200 tons of aggregate to counter the erosion and stabilise the spillway.
There is talk of residents being allowed limited access to their houses over the weekend.
Where Whaley Bridge is in relation to the reservoir and the dam wall which has a hole in it, and the flow of the water
It is a sight as alarming as it is also deeply impressive, enhanced by the sheer majesty of the surrounding Peak District countryside. Think Last of the Summer Wine-meets-Hollywood disaster movie. I arrive to find frantic action in the sky and at the water’s edge while, down below, stands Whaley Bridge, a ghost town save for a few blue flashing lights and the odd snatch of officialdom in a hi-vis bib scurrying nervously about the most deserted streets in Britain. On hills for miles around, locals and hikers cheerfully absorb this surreal sight. Many have brought children and Thermos flasks to make a day of it.
There is absolutely no sense of panic, no anger, no finger-waving blame squawkers. I can’t even find anyone who wants to blame all this on ‘Tory cuts’ or ‘austerity’. They’re a stoical lot here in Derbyshire.
‘We’d never had rain quite like it so people can understand how something like this has happened,’ says David Lomax, a local councillor and a resident for 42 years.
On Thursday night, he was helping police evacuate the town as word spread. Only one resident refused to heed his advice. ‘He was in a house in Bridge Street. I did point out that the name of the road suggested it was not a good place to be.’ Mr Lomax later saw the man reluctantly heading for higher ground.
Early yesterday morning, when he should have been celebrating his party’s by-election win, the Lib Dem councillor was round at the emergency centre in nearby Chapel-en-le-Frith to check up on evacuees. He was pleasantly surprised to find the place almost empty. Of the 1,500 souls forced out of those homes in the danger zone, nearly all had been taken in by family and friends.

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The Prime Minister inspected the Toddbrook Reservoir from a helicopter on Friday night before meeting with panicked locals and rescue teams
‘People are like that in Derbyshire. We don’t do panic,’ says Edwina Currie proudly when I drop in for a coffee. ‘My impression is that everything that needs to be done is being done already.’
Like many people who had never heard of Toddbrook Reservoir until this week, I am a little surprised that a town of 6,500 people should be at risk from a dam built in 1830 and administered by a charity. There has been a lot of talk about ‘Victorian engineering’ but this thing is actually Georgian. It wasn’t built to supply water to homes and factories. It is a relic of the pre-railway era, built to supply water to Britain’s canal network.
Mrs Currie turns out to be well-read on the subject and allays my concerns. ‘It’s an earthenware dam of a type that was being built right up to the 20th Century and they’re always monitoring it,’ she says.
I wander round to the south side of the reservoir where there is a minor earthquake from behind a hedge. Suddenly a JCB crashes through, tearing down trees, fencing and a dry stone wall to reach the water’s edge. It paves the way for yet more pumps and is followed by a platoon of officials in hi-vis.
There is a buzz of excitement among a crowd of onlookers.