As Devastating Floods Rage, UK Phone Help Line Charges 65 Cents/Minute

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Other bureaucratic blunders have been less amusing. When the water first rose on Jan. 3, it flooded not just homes but septic tanks, making it impossible to flush toilets. It took the local government authority three and a half weeks to send portable chemical toilets to the village, Mr. Baillie-Grohman said. Until then, he said, “it was plastic bags.” Showers have been rationed and cold, and the use of washing machines — those not destroyed by the flood — discouraged to avoid adding to the water table.

“It’s been like extreme camping,” said his wife, Holly Baillie-Grohman, recalling a recent dinner party at a neighbor’s house. They canoed out of their front door, through the gate and up the road all the way into their friends’ front room.

The weather, always a popular topic here, has suddenly become the subject of political controversy. Prime Minister David Cameron faced questions this week, not least about a flood help line that has been charging the equivalent of about 65 cents a minute. “Floodsuckers,” read a headline in the tabloid The Sun, while the satirical magazine Private Eye ran a spoof cover featuring a diver underwater with the headline, “Environment Minister Visits Somerset.”

Here in the Somerset Levels, a vast stretch of moors in southwestern England, flooding is very much part of the local lore and lifestyle. Older residents recall driving a horse and cart through the floodwaters, and toddlers often learn to walk in rubber boots. The town of Glastonbury, home to Britain’s notably wet music festival, is 10 miles down the road.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/world/europe/accustomed-to-floods-but-nothing-like-this-in-southern-england.html?_r=1