Wightman Road gardens flooded by the New River

Today (Thursday 18th) around 12.30 the fire brigade showed up at the Wightman Road entrance to the New River path.  It seems that six houses had reported flooding in their back gardens.

It was clear that the water level in the river was well above normal.  This photo is looking north towards the Hamden Road bridge.

This one shows the water touching the underside of the foot bridge and spreading over the grass bank.  A solitary Thames Water employee came along at the same time and spent hours dragging weed out of the river.  The usual careful routine of daily inspection and quick action clearly broke down badly this time.

Here is the mass of accumulated weed caught by the primary grating and holding back the flow and raising the water level.

Even the secondary grating was heavily blocked:

Four hours later, the level at this grating is at least a foot lower:

Later still the immense mass of weed has been tidied away:

and the river is back to a more normal level.  The water is well over a foot lower and no longer touching the footbridge. 

I don't which houses were affected nor how serious the damage.  I was told, however, that the water came through into the street.

As the gratings had not been cleared for several days and the build up of flotsam was accelerated by routine weed cutting on Wednesday, this sounds like a serious incident that should have been avoided.