Warning of lives lost to weather in Birmingham

Sep 18 2008 by Jane Tyler, Birmingham Mail

PEOPLE will die as Birmingham struggles in vain to cope with the freak weather conditions which will come with climate change, the city’s green boss has predicted.

Sandy Taylor, head of climate change and sustainability for the city council, delivered the domesday warning, saying the city would be devastated if it was hit by the hurricanes and heatwaves predicted to come with global warning.

The only way of preventing such mass chaos was a complete overhaul of the city’s emergency planning response.

Mr Taylor gave his stark warning to councillors on the co-ordinating overview and scrutiny committee.

Councillors heard how the Government had set all local councils targets of adapting to climate change which required them to achieve certain levels each year.

These targets include setting up co-ordinated emergency response teams for weather-related emergencies.

Mr Taylor said although Birmingham had done “excellent work” in setting up individual teams and initiatives for such things as fuel poverty, flood risk, the Birmingham Resilience Team and insulating houses, what was lacking was a single body to oversee the entire project.

In a report to councillors he said: “It is essential that over the next few years the city properly resources this issue.

“The current practices would simply mask the problems.

“If left as things stand, after 2011 with predictions to weather patterns, networks and infrastructures would probably start to fail with huge potential economic, environmental and social impacts.

“There would be collapse or relocations of major businesses and disruption in community cohesion, along with significant environmental losses of species and or habit and pollution incidents.”

Mr Taylor said last week’s flooding where roads turned into rivers and people were forced to move out of their homes, was a foretaste of what was to come.

“We have to think about the probability of risk that is increasing because the weather is changing,” he said.

“And in the longer term these weather events might change even more so we could also have the wet and the heat.

“So what do we do as a local authority for that? Over the next three years we will be looking at the risks, where intervention should be and who should be responsible for the investment.”