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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Steven Morris and Jamie Grierson

Forecasters and flood defences under scrutiny after UK’s Storm Bert ordeal

A man in a street of houses with mud up to his knees and on his hands with a boot stuck in the dirt in front of him
Rob Scholes, 75, at the site of a mudslide in Cwmtillery, south Wales. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

Forecasters, environment officials and politicians have been strongly criticised over the warnings issued before Storm Bert and the fitness of flood defences to cope with increasingly common extreme weather.

A huge clear-up is under way across swathes of Wales and England, with hundreds of properties flooded and a former Welsh mining town hit by a landslip from a coal tip, leaving buildings deep in sludge and mud.

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