UK flood stress 'could take years off lives'

Stress caused by the flooding in Britain this summer could take years off victims’ lives, a psychiatrist living on the worst-hit street in Oxford said today.

The ground floor of Dr Camilo Zapata’s £300,000 (€447,000) terraced house on Earl Street was still under at least 2ft of water today, he said.

Outside in the road a river, up to four foot deep, continued to flow.

Dr Zapata said as well as the physical damage caused to homes, there would also be a mental toll.

“I’m a doctor and I deal with this sort of thing with my patients,” he said.

“You can look at this in terms of the stress and the trauma. I feel pretty heart-broken myself and I’m driving to work absolutely shattered. It’s already started for me.

“You can look at this in terms of loss of life, if, for example, you consider the extra glasses of wine you may drink to get over this, together with the related financial, logistical and emotional costs of repairing the damage.

“I think the whole thing will actually finish some people off – literally. There are some old boys living alone near me who struggle to cope without the floods.”

“We have to look at it in perspective. In Bangladesh every year there are floods and people’s houses are simply washed away,” he said.

“When you compare what has happened in this country to this or the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami or the disaster in New Orleans, this is nothing really.”

Rain was falling heavily this morning across west Oxfordshire.