COMMUNITY FUNDRAISER FOR FLOODING EQUIPMENT

Well the Flying Fox had a terrible day yesturday amongst other residents and businesses around us. There is a lot of damage and we are putting the volunteer team together to help with the clean up operation outside and in. It was a busy day on the volunteer front yesturday and everyone has been amazing coming forward. There is a lot to do around the community with cleaning up areas so even though the rain has stopped there is a lot to do.

A number of properties in Woburn Sands , Woburn, Aspley Guise did sustain flood damage over the weekend due to the heavy rain and we are still recruiting volunteers. The emergency services were stretched to their limits and pulled in Mid Shires Rescue Service. There is also work to be done on Sandy Lane to reboost and make the trenches deeper to stop the silt from coming down onto the High Street.

There are times the emergency services cannot get to us at a moments notice and we need to put an action plan in place as we will need to deal with this on our own when emergency services are stretched. They do an amazing job.

We learnt a lot over the past couple of days of how vulnerable our community is when mother nature strikes. We were not prepared for the sheer volume of rain that came down.

For my birthday I would like to do something which I hope will help our community.

Our community lacks emergency equipment to deal with flooding issues. The emergency services were fully stretched and there are times we need to step up as a community and set to action stations . I am going to see if I can set up a Community fund raiser to raise money to buy water pumps, sand bags and other flood equipment which we can store away in case any residents or businesses need to access any equipment. There was a shortage of easily accessible equipment like water pumps, sandbags when the rain hit.

I also think there needs to be a greater supply of emergency sand bags. There were not enough ready to cater for what happened.

So perhaps in addition to this fund raising we could slso organise a day when volunteetscould help make up sandbags to replenish any stocks to be stored away.

It was upsetting to see the people, friends who were affected by this and hope the community will help me with this venture.