{"id":351,"date":"2018-10-23T09:35:37","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T09:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/?page_id=351"},"modified":"2020-03-05T11:50:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T11:50:58","slug":"andrew-aged-15","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/flood-narratives\/andrew-aged-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew aged 15"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><span style=\"color: #3366ff;font-size: 12pt\">This is Andrew\u2019s story about what happened to him, with some\u00a0key learning points at the end\u2026<\/span><\/h1>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Background<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">On the evening of 9th February 2014, after days of persistent rain, seven severe flood warnings (the highest category) were put in place for the River Thames in north Surrey. Residents were evacuated and roads and schools were closed. The Staines area experienced clusters of events involving tidal, river, rainfall and groundwater flooding. These four stories, taken from our \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/floodrecovery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Children, Young People and Flooding: Recovery and Resilience<\/a>\u2019 project, show how flooding can reveal, and even exacerbate, existing social vulnerabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Andrew, aged 15, lives in a house with his mum, dad and older brother.<\/strong> Evacuated from their home by the military, Andrew was most concerned about his pet lizard \u2013 trying to keep her warm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jack B3 2\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/estream.lancaster.ac.uk\/Embed.aspx?id=5238&amp;code=bv~abCecseGetPwFmxJeikGMAcD&amp;oc=1&amp;hm=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/andrew-aged-15-audio-transcript\/\">(Transcript for sound bite)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">He spent the first night at his \u2018nan\u2019s\u2019. Then he moved with the rest of his family to his aunt\u2019s for three days, but she had a newborn baby and it wasn\u2019t convenient for the family to stay there any longer, so they then moved into a hotel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">After the evacuation the family returned to their home to check on the damage:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>We saw the water in the house\u2026 It wasn\u2019t a lot, it was just about maybe three, four inches, but it can still do a lot of damage. You still have to do one metre up from that, so it creates a lot of damage. Yeah, not good.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_306\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 310px\">\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-306 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/files\/2018\/10\/Skip-and-sandbags-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"a full skip and a heap of sandbags outside a house\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/files\/2018\/10\/Skip-and-sandbags-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/files\/2018\/10\/Skip-and-sandbags-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/files\/2018\/10\/Skip-and-sandbags-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/files\/2018\/10\/Skip-and-sandbags-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Photo taken by one of the participants from the Children, Young People and Flooding Project<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Andrew told us that sandbags would not have stopped the groundwater from coming up through the floorboards: \u2018sandbags won\u2019t stop that\u2019. Andrew also told us that he felt that his local community was \u2018splintering apart\u2019, which he said was \u2018disappointing to see\u2019 after the council had distributed the sandbags:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>We had to fight for them. There was a lot of people who wanted them, just taking more than they needed and they weren\u2019t sharing it out. I think everybody was for themselves .\u2026 When I moved out, you know, it was just us, it\u2019s just, you\u2019ve got your family and that\u2019s it. Nobody helps you.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Living in the hotel was difficult \u2013 Andrew had to share a small room with his older brother which he said was \u2018not much fun\u2019. He discovered that hotel living disrupts your day-to-day life and there\u2019s a feeling of lost independence: \u2018you couldn\u2019t even get your own cereal \u2013 like, you want to do those everyday things\u2019. The conditions in the hotel affected him and he empathised with other people who had been evacuated and were trying to get on with their lives whilst negotiating with their insurers:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>There\u2019s people on my road who are still not in their houses\u2026Yeah, that\u2019s not good at all \u2013 still living in hotels \u2013 and they\u2019ve got like whole families going to work and going to school and you can\u2019t cope with it\u2019.\u00a0 <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Andrew also told us that the disruption affected his studies because he couldn\u2019t access crucial GCSE documents online:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>So it really affected, like people had to go on line and get their like\u2026 their work off of there. But I couldn\u2019t because I\u2019m in a hotel, I\u2019ve got no Wi-Fi. The hotel\u2019s Wi-Fi was absolutely terrible, you couldn\u2019t do anything, and this was when we were choosing options. I couldn\u2019t even like fill out that form because it was online. I couldn\u2019t print it out. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Andrew ended up living in the hotel until the end of March (about 6 weeks). The family then went to live in a rented house until the repairs were completed on their home. They returned home in November 2015, after 21 months away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Andrew\u2019s story shows how displacement impacts on day-to-day life, education, people\u2019s sense of independence and understanding of what it means to be flooded.\u00a0 Interestingly, it challenges the common claim that disaster brings people together. We see that tensions within the community can be heightened by creating a feeling of injustice if groups within the community are perceived to be treated differently.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong><u>Key Points<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Groundwater flooding takes the family by surprise<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Shows how flood experience leads to important new knowledge<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Living in a hotel results in loss of independence<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Living on a day-to-day basis in a hotel is expensive<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Being flooded affects your education<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><strong>Please reference as: <em>Flooding \u2013 a social impact archive<\/em>, Lancaster University<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is Andrew\u2019s story about what happened to him, with some\u00a0key learning points at the end\u2026 Background On the evening of 9th February 2014, after days of persistent rain, seven severe flood warnings (the highest category) were put in place &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/flood-narratives\/andrew-aged-15\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":368,"featured_media":0,"parent":11,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[9,16,11,17],"class_list":["post-351","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-children-young-people","tag-data","tag-education","tag-evacuation"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Pa0Enl-5F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/368"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1774,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/351\/revisions\/1774"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/floodarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}