Oh Boy... the great flood of britain 2007 what light will you carry?

[serious sam]

Yes... You heard it on the news! 2 months of rain poured in 2 hours... NUTS! here some more rain from my tears:mecry:. My house haven't been flooded yet but those house about 20 mins walk from my house is in severe.

In this situation, what kind of light will you bring with you? I don't own much light thus not much experience on lights. But i will carry my Fenix L2D CE and LOD CE as my EDC which have a good strob for those "just in case".

Keeping all my batteries fully charged incase of black outs! Oh boy... Gonna start to look for waterproof lights.

 

[defusion]

any of my surefire's would do, they should be plenty waterproof for this kind of stuff.
you don't need a dive light to survive a few feet of water.

 

[qip]

this is where the Maglite with Led drop in comes in :thumbsup: like a 3-4D 6ex



see mags are great in REAL SITUATIONS :twothumbs


I take my L2d & P3d incase stores run out of AA and the Mag4d 6EX

 

[Monocrom]

Wow! And I was upset yesterday when some heavy rain caused flooding in a subway station close to one of the train yards here in NYC.... Shutting down subway service on quite a few trains. I couldn't get to work. Glad it wasn't the other way around.

Yeah, I'd also go with a MagLED model. One of the C or D cell models.
Surefires would only be good for short instances where intense light would be needed.

The Nite-Ize LED bulb for C or D cell Maglites is also a winner, for these types of situations. In a 2-cell Mag, you'll get days of continuous runtime. In a 6-cell Mag? We're talking weeks!

Gerber's Infinity Ultra task light would come in great for small lighting chores and will also give you days of continuous runtime. All on 1AA cell!

 

[Mad1]

I'm quite lucky living quite high up. Although it could be fun for it to flood near me, I could make good use of the snorkel on my land rover.

 

[Size15's]

I have been involved in one of the recent flood events. Our car park and the streets around the office were flooded with 1-2ft of water (it was 4-5ft deep in places). 72mm of rain fell in three hours. The 20cm deep brook close to our office was over 2 metres deep for a short while.
Myself and most of my team are preparing to be called in at the weekend in the event that the 50mm of rain that is forecast for the weekend falls in our catchment and the local incident room is re-opened.
The town experienced roughly 450mm of rain in 2003. By 18th June 2007 we had already experienced that much so far this year.

I don't pretend that the flood event I experienced was anything like as serious as that of Sheffield and Hull etc.

The surface water flooding of the access street to our office occurred over the course of 2-3 hours I guess. The brook came out of bank and made matters a whole lot worse in the course of about 1-2 hours.

In these very 'flashy' events that you could be caught up in you don't often have access to anything other than what you have close at hand.

In terms of flashlights I had my L2 standard EDC on me.
In my car I had my rucksack containing an M6 (MN20) with one spare set of SF123As in an SC, an SC3 with four SF123As for my L2.
I also had an EOS headtorch, Inova X5, Pelican SuperSabreLite in the car and on my keys I have three Photons and an ArcAAA.

My car very nearly got flooded. I managed to move it to the highest point in the car park (since the road was already too deeply flooded to drive away). Other cars were not so fortunate. We mostly keep out kit and gear in our cars so it was important I grabbed everything from it as early in the event as possible and stored it inside the office off the floors.

When you get trapped by an event such as a flash flood it really shows whether there has been any preparation for such an event.

All the office's searchlights are rechargeable and kept in their boxes in a locked store room uncharged. In the event they are needed the power had better be on and the need had better not be urgent.
That said, when I joined there were no functioning searchlights so at least they listened to me and ordered half a dozen new ones. They've never been used though as far as I can tell. This will change though.
It is light until 8-9 o'clock at the moment. If the event had occurred during winter then it would already been dark and things could have been a whole lot worse.

We have seen many people in the floodwaters over the past week. This is extremely dangerous and should only be attempted as a last resort.

It doesn't take much fast-flowing water to knock you off your feet.

Floodwater often contains foul water contamination and there is a real risk of getting sick from contact with it either directly or handling things that were in contact with it. Note that you may have a whole load of jabs protecting you from infections etc but others you come into contact with may not.

Floodwaters hide many hazards such as moving objects that can take you off your feet, obstacles and such to trip you up, get you caught, and can lift manhole covers which you could fall into etc.

If you are not in a position to safely wait for the waters to drop you should contact the police explaining where you are and your situation. They will determine what action should be taken, if any and when. For example if you are hurt, with young children, are old, are disabled or otherwise at risk they will give you higher priority.

It is very dangerous to drive (or worse attempt to drive) through floodwater.
We assisted the Fire & Rescue Service through volunteering the use of one of our more suitable 4x4 vehicles with a trained and experienced driver to help rescue some elderly people trapped on the ground floor of a care home.

Many homes were left without power as a result of the flooding. I would expect CPFers to have sufficient illumination tools to 'get by'. Consider your friends and family as well as neighbours. As Flashaholics we can offer advice on the sort of illumination devices that they should have in preparation. If they are not keen to invest perhaps we can give them suitable products as gifts. For examples I gave my parents have one of those glow-in-the-dark Pelican 4AA flashlights with the LEDs and they have it mounted in the kitchen where it gets the sunlight so it glows almost all night.

Preparation is key.
Having a plan is important.

I hope my post helps. If you have any questions or feel any of my advice is not appropriate [or wrong] please let me know and I will seek clarification from my colleagues.

Al

 

[Lee1959]

Good advice Al, it is too late to think about these things after they occur, all you can do then is improvise and react if you have not planned before hand.

 

[Casual Flashlight User]

Not much chance of flooding where I am..but I will be carrying my usual compliment of a HDS U60GT and Arc-P for backup...I'll probably stick my trusty old Huntlight FT-01 in my coat pocket as well

Stay dry and stay alert my fellow Brits!


CFU

Yes... You heard it on the news! 2 months of rain poured in 2 hours... NUTS! here some more rain from my tears:mecry:. My house haven't been flooded yet but those house about 20 mins walk from my house is in severe.

In this situation, what kind of light will you bring with you? I don't own much light thus not much experience on lights. But i will carry my Fenix L2D CE and LOD CE as my EDC which have a good strob for those "just in case".

Keeping all my batteries fully charged incase of black outs! Oh boy... Gonna start to look for waterproof lights.

 

[matrixshaman]

Sorry to hear of the troubles. Is this the worst you have ever seen in your area? I feel the weather is getting more extreme everywhere in the last couple years.

 

[zk188]

A Glo-toob sounds suitable to carry with other lights.

 

[fieldops]

My thoughts and prayers for those who have suffered or lost their lives in the UK flooding. I hope things dry out for you soon. Sometimes we here in the States forget about the terrible damage that can result in other countries from what we would normally consider moderate/heavy rain amounts in parts of the US. I hope you guys don't receive much more. Flooding is pure misery. You don't want to end up like parts of Texas, where 500-600mm of rain fell in just over 1 day.
My thoughts and prayers for them as well.

I guess I would reach for my surefire M3T for brightness and a Fenix P3D for runtime.

Hang in there guys, We're pulling for you!

 

[serious sam]

Is this the worst you have ever seen in your area? I feel the weather is getting more extreme everywhere in the last couple years.

As far as i can remember, it is probably the worst. Never had such serious flood before.

Size15's That is a very good advice. Appreciate it very much.

Need more reliable lights and not cheapo chinese lights....

 

[Thujone]

Play it safe, flood water is no joke. Texas is really getting it hard this year. Better ask yourself if you have any emergency food to take on the roof with you as you wait for rescue. That is a real possibility when mother nature attacks.

 

[tman11]

Take care to our friends in the UK..stay safe. We are experiencing some flooding here in Texas at the moment as well. Luckily I live in a big city away from the bad areas-feel very fortunate.

 

[BlackDecker]

Oklahoma is getting their share of flooding, too. We've already had over 30 inches of rain so far this year - and our annual rainfall is only 33 inches.

 

[f22shift]

insane

is the l2d and l0d dunkable?

 

[matrixshaman]

Geezz - like I was saying weather seems to be getting more extreme. I just saw on CNN that Marble Falls, Texas got 19 inches of rain in 6 hours! That's scary.

 

[Windscale]

Many new properties in the UK were built on floodplains and riversides. A diving torch would be very useful. A Gentos SD120 will fit the bill very well.

One of the reasons for the bad weather may be that we have not treated the environment with respect. So time to think about this now. Switching to rechargeables would be a good start.

 

[Crash]

Before Hurricane Katrina, we evacuated from the New Orleans area to a relative's home in a different city. They also got hit by the storm and lost power for several days, although it doesn't take a major storm to make that happen where they live. I can tell you that at a time like that, you want the most absolutely reliable flashlight you can find. It should be strongly built because it will certainly be dropped at some point. It should have an LED instead of an incan bulb, and most importantly it should be at least able to accept primary batteries even if you normally use rechargeables. Having a light that uses common batteries is also crucial. Although I have a large supply of 123's for my own personal light (an HDS EDC 60XRGT), all of the lights that I have for my family members have LED's and use AA batteries. AA batteries can be found almost anywhere. Also most people are going to be snatching up the "C" and "D" sizes for the inexpensive flashlights they just bought from the store because they didn't already have a decent flashlight that worked. LED flashlights that run on AA batteries can provide some significant run-time as well as providing adequate amounts of usable light.

 

[BB]

Hmmm... The amount of rain world wide is pretty constant. Moisture is picked up from evaporating moisture from the world's oceans (lakes, ground, etc.)--which is driven by the sun's solar radiation--which itself is pretty steady. That water condenses out of the air and falls as rain, snow, etc.

Where the rain falls tends to be variable. Based on features on the ground (water, mountains, etc.). Texas, et. al., is getting more than its "normal" share because of stalled weather fronts dumping rain there--rather than somewhere else. Much of what we see is the result of random chance and localized trends.

There are also solar cycles (like the 11 year sun spot cycle--and other longer cycles on the order of 10's, 100's, possibly thousands of years) And even cosmic radiation from collapsing stars and the Sun's varying magnetic field effects weather as we go through various regions in space) that also affect weather. I have noticed these cycles growing up (when first went to grade school--lots of heavy storms, even rare snow/lighting)--years later I thought that I was a little kid impressed by weather--only to experience the heavy storms again--on sunspot cycle.

What people can immediately affect is the amount of losses due to wind, rain, floods. In the US, we have been in a hurricane quiet time for several decades and have had many new structures built on the coast and flood plains of the US in the East and South--now new hurricanes are affecting millions people in areas that never had permanent settlements before (all supported by US Government Flood Insurance and Army Core of Engineers building/maintaining flood control structures)...

And that is affected by people building on the immediate coastlines, flood plans, and be helped by reducing impacts on the immediate land areas (defoliation, paving, etc. of water sheds). Also, building codes can dramatically improve survivability of natural and man-made disasters (earthquake building codes, reducing unreinforced masonry/mud brick construction, better compaction of soils used for fill, preventing flying debries--like roofs, clearing brush/trees from around homes to reduce fire risks, better built and maintained dams, etc.).

There is a lot that can be done--and much of the problem has been created by explicit government polices world wide.

-Bill