Published at 11:28, Tuesday, 04 September 2012

Considering summer failed to put in any kind of appearance, autumn turned up with extraordinary punctuality.

Rain-swollen river: A house at Bridge End, Egremont, collapsed into the River Ehen at the end of August

There are times when a new season seems to click into place, almost audibly. Autumn did that with remarkable clarity one shocking day last week.

We will never know whether the misery and traumas of that day were the final cruel punishments of an unfriendly exiting summer or the showy, bullish arrival of a reluctantly premature autumn. It barely mattered. The terrible results were the same – as the season changed.

Poor old Cumbria, so frequently the brunt of nature’s undeserved wrath, reprised again the cruelly familiar helplessness of being tossed and smashed by uninvited – though not unusual – storms.

Floods, landslides, collapsing homes and gardens, a train derailment – and now the miserable aftermath of cleaning up and camping out. Painful repeats of what has so often gone before.

And then, just one new day later, morning skies showed the particular porcelain blue of autumn. The sun took her sparkly September position and first frost added a glint to a recovering landscape at a later dawn.

The new season reopens old wounds. A £50,000 relief fund has been set up for householders worst affected by the damaging flash floods which struck west Cumbria on Thursday. Hundreds of properties were flooded – some not for the first or even second time – and it’s thought many of the people affected will not be able to return to their homes for up to 18 months.

The Cumbria Community Foundation has said grants of up to £1,000 will help people with clean-up and recovery costs. But, while the cash will be welcome and useful, it won’t necessarily ease the worry and strain of what must be growing in this county into expectation of the worst of weather always bringing the worst of luck.

The Environment Agency and other agencies have their work cut out. Trying to assess affected areas to identify the precise causes of flooding and estimate whether any additional work is needed to mount protection against the elements, sounds like an almost impossible task.

The magnificence of Cumbria is owed to its geography, topography, geology, its variety of landscape and its exposure to the elements that through history have shaped it.

Can we take on Mother Nature and divert her fury? It’s an important question for Cumbria because if we can and if we know where and how we can – which seems to be the implication – are we trying hard enough and spending wisely enough to work with her now predictable instincts?

The wettest, most punishing summer for 100 years has delivered misery this year and there’s nothing yet to say autumn or any future seasons will treat us more kindly.

Even when budgets are tight and resources low, meeting nature’s challenges with ingenuity and diligence starts to look like a duty beyond question and above optional.

We have no choice in a county so closely connected to nature’s dominating whims.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk