Allan Fellowes had a rude awakening the day Hull flooded.

“It was raining very heavily,” he says of the previous night. “I woke up the next morning and I was looking at the ceiling and there were refraction marks on it. I noticed that the couch I’d fallen asleep on was moving a bit unusually. And I actually fell into [the water].

“I went out into the street and there were so many things happening. I was thinking: my God, what’s happened? Have I woken up yet? There were people going down the street in canoes.”

What had happened was the wettest day in one of the wettest months on record. On 25 June 2007, a depression moving slowly across the UK brought sustained heavy rain to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands. Around 100mm fell on Hull: a month’s worth in a day.

At Kingswood in the north of the city, the Yorkshire Water pumping station failed; water poured into the streets and people’s homes. As residents abandoned their cars to wade home, Humberside Fire and Rescue received over 1,500 calls in 12 hours. In West Hull they evacuated 50 residents of a nursing home and 90 more who had been stranded in a metre of water. One person they couldn’t save was 28-year-old Michael Barnett, who died of hypothermia after four hours trapped in icy water in a storm drain.

If you asked for planning permission to put Hull where it is now, you’d probably be refused Lynne Frostick

What made it all the more galling was that Hull seemed to have been ignored. Unlike reporting in other flooded parts of the country, national news coverage of the city was sparse, provoking comparisons with the Blitz when Hull’s name was edited out of the newsreels.

The clear up, if anything, was even more traumatic. While the council and Yorkshire Water disputed liability for blocked drains and unmanned pumps, hundreds were left to cope in temporary accommodation. Many had no insurance.

But as bad as 2007 was, could it just be a foretaste?

Cleveland Street in Hull as the flood waters rise in June 2007. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire/PA Images

According to the UN, the world is currently on course to heat up by 3C by 2100. The resulting sea level rise could see a radical redrawing of the map of East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and East Anglia – areas that are already among the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe. Speculating in May 2017, Dr Hugh Ellis, head of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association, said: “We need to think about moving populations ... We need to be thinking: does Hull have a future?”

Doomsday pedlars have both history and today’s extreme weather events on their side. The East Riding’s crumbling coastline abounds in stories of towns lost to the waves. None fell as far as Ravenser Odd: in 1299, this trading port at the mouth of the Humber rivalled the newly chartered King’s-town upon Hull for prestige and wealth; less than 70 years later, it had been swallowed up by the sea.

In 2013, a record tidal surge spilled over the Albert Dock and came within centimetres of overtopping the tidal barrier, the city centre’s main defence. Flood damage in the city itself was minimal, but more than 500 properties were evacuated in Keadby, Lincolnshire, after a hole opened up in the bank of the river Trent; residents also had to be rescued in Burringham, Gunness, Amcotts and South Ferriby. On the north bank of the Humber, riverside communities were flooded from Spurn Point to Goole.

“Water comes from all directions in Hull – it makes it uniquely vulnerable to flooding,” says emeritus professor of geography Lynne Frostick, an expert in Britain’s estuaries and adviser to the Environment Agency on flooding. “Hull’s at risk from the North Sea. We’ve got rainfall: Hull is like a basin with the taps on full if it’s raining hard [with] very few overflows. There are risks from ground water flooding in parts of the city. If you asked for planning permission to put Hull where it is now, you’d probably be refused.”



Residents walk through flood waters in North Cave, near Hull, in June 2007. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

The 2013 floods, she explained, resulted from the collision of two natural forces. “The lowering of [atmospheric] pressure on the water surface in the North Sea causes it to rise up into a bulge,” she said. “When that is superimposed on a spring tide, it causes a very high tide.”

These effects will only increase as sea levels rise, and a warming atmosphere also means more violent rainstorms. It’s not a question of if Hull floods again, Frostick says – but when.

Walking along the River Hull at low tide, it’s hard to imagine this silted trickle ever posing a danger. But, for centuries, the water has frequently spilled over on to the surrounding low-lying streets and warehouses. The river’s tidal barrier was supposed to put an end to that – and so far it has, protecting 17,000 properties from more than 30 surges since 1980. But the kind of “hard” flood defences Hull relies on – barriers, walls, pipes and pumps – offer diminishing returns in a rising tide.

Living With Water, a new partnership between the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water and Hull and East Riding councils, is trying to rethink Hull’s approach to “work with water, not against it”, as Frostick says.

One method is “natural flood management”, using green spaces to hold then slowly release water following an extreme event. The council has started creating its own “aqua-greens”, and is planning a new nature reserve, close to the Bransholme estate, to act as a natural sponge.

Converted former warehouses along the River Hull, with the tidal barrier in the distance. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

Alex Codd, Hull city council’s planning manager, also favours smaller-scale interventions. Water butts fitted as standard to new houses, he says, could stop rainwater from swamping the drainage system during heavy storms. Unfortunately, the simplest solution – not building in a flood-risk area – is not an option for a city that is 90% below high-tide level. “If we don’t build in the flood plain in Hull, the city will cease to exist,” he says. “[We’ve set] design criteria that developers have to adhere to. If you’re building in this part [of the city], you have to raise the floor level. There’s a very clear standard they know they have to meet.”

If we don’t build in the flood plain in Hull, the city will cease to exist Alex Codd

Householders are also being asked to prepare for increased flood risk: signing up for Environment Agency flood warnings, and having a “flood plan” to safeguard irreplaceable possessions. But so-called “property-level protection” – such as anti-flood doors and air bricks, non-return valves, sumps and pumps – is more controversial. Bransholme resident Nick Fitzgerald, who was flooded in 2007, considered property protection but found it too expensive. “We’re at the end of the row,” he said. “For house-level protection to work, you’d have to do a barrier for [everyone]. It would cost thousands.”

“The Environment Agency tells people to be prepared,” said Heather Shepherd of the National Flood Forum, who in the aftermath of the 2007 floods helped set up a support centre to advise on insurance claims and flood resilience. “But the people we were dealing with in Hull couldn’t afford protection in their houses. They didn’t have that sort of money. Also, it’s really hard to perceive what’s going to happen. You need impartial surveyors to tell you what you need and none of it’s cheap.”

In the public realm, Yorkshire Water has spent £16m rebuilding its defunct Kingswood pumping station, and the Environment Agency is repairing ancient pilings on the river Hull, as well as planning to invest £42m on improving 19km of tidal flood walls. Will it be enough?

Humberside Fire and Rescue officers check a flood-damaged car in 2013. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Paull, a riverside village six miles east of Hull, is a good place to address this question. Its new flood wall offers a sweeping panorama across the Humber: from the chimneys of Killingholme power station to the Humber bridge; just to the west lies the Siemens factory where wind turbine blades stand glinting in the sun.

Paull was badly damaged by the 2013 tidal surge and its new flood defences combine soft and hard measures. An intertidal saltmarsh, designed to flood at high tide, protects agricultural land and encourages wildlife. Meanwhile, along Main Street, the concrete flood defences have been raised with reinforced glass panels.

With its new glass wall, Paull seems a great advertisement for Living With Water. But despite resembling a Low Countries landscape – nearby agricultural land was actually reclaimed from the Humber in the 17th century – its flood defences can’t compare with the modern-day Netherlands. While today’s Rotterdam is protected by the mighty Maeslant storm surge barrier, built to withstand a one-in-10,000-year storm, Hull must rely on smaller-scale flood mitigation schemes and appeals to personal resilience. A Humber barrier was rejected in the 1980s because of the large number of commercial ships using the estuary, and because of cost: the Environment Agency won’t say how much, though the Thames barrier, opened in 1984 at a cost of £584m (or roughly £1.6bn at today’s prices), gives some idea.

But what price apocalypse? Towering over a retirement home in the village of Hedon is the Kilnsea Cross, reputedly the last remnant of Ravenser Odd. According to the 14th century chronicler, Hull’s medieval twin town had it coming: “By its wicked works and piracies, it provoked the wrath of God.” Still, after 2007 and 2013, it’s hard not to feel empathy for “the enclosed persons, removing thence with their possessions, [leaving] that town totally without defence, to be shortly swallowed up.”

Hull’s latter-day flood survivors know all about “removing with their possessions”. Allan Fellowes had to get rid of many of his belongings – including his “floating” sofa – after the flood, and now divides his time between Hull and a houseboat in Norfolk. “At least on a boat I won’t get flooded,” he says.

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