\n<\/p>\n
The son of an 83-year-old woman who died during Storm Babet has called for more money to be invested in protecting homes from flooding.<\/p>\n
An inquest at Chesterfield coroner\u2019s court heard on Friday that Maureen Gilbert drowned in her home in Chesterfield after the River Rother overflowed on 21 October 2023 during the storm.<\/p>\n
Storm Babet claimed seven lives across the UK, led to more than 10,000 people being evacuated from their homes and caused in excess of \u00a3450m in property damage.<\/p>\n
The assistant coroner Matthew Kewley delivered a short narrative conclusion, stating that Gilbert had \u201cdied in her home due to drowning in flood waters caused by Storm Babet\u201d, and that he believed there was still a risk to life in her road owing to improper flood defences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned in the event of another adverse weather event such as Storm Babet, that there is an ongoing risk to life at Tapton Terrace in respect to people who may be elderly, vulnerable or immobile,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Residents of the street Maureen Gilbert lived on are still at risk from flooding, the coroner said. <\/span> Photograph: Derbyshire Constabulary\/Family handout\/PA<\/p>\n Paul Gilbert, who found his mother\u2019s body floating in her home after receiving a call from her saying water was coming into the house, agreed that the street his mother died on was still at risk, telling reporters gathered outside the courthouse that more funding for flood defences could save lives.<\/p>\n \u201cMore money does need to be invested in floods because this is something that obviously is going to keep happening,\u201d he said. \u201cMore money needs to be available and more long-term plans need to be put in. I still believe that dredging rivers and cleaning rivers out, for me, is the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The inquest heard that on the evening of the flood, fire and rescue services \u201cdid all they reasonably and safely could\u201d to save Gilbert but had to stop once it got too dark. A request was made for Gilbert\u2019s home to be reinspected the following morning, but due to a Derbyshire fire and rescue service\u2019s control room systems going down, the request did not come through and no reinspection occurred.<\/p>\n <\/span>Maureen Gilbert with her mother and father.<\/span> Photograph: Jill Mead\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Paul Gilbert, who spoke during the inquest, which began on Monday and lasted throughout the week, had told the court that he did not blame the services for the technical failure, but still wished he had not been the one to find her body.<\/p>\n \u201cThe failings of the system going down and messages not being passed on is hard,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause if that had have happened and the fire service had have gone in and found my mum, I wouldn\u2019t have had to find her which has been one of my biggest nightmares since that day, finding my mum, but systems do go down.\u201d<\/p>\n Kewley said he was \u201csatisfied it cannot be said, on balance, that the outcome necessarily would have been different if that reinspection had taken place\u201d and that Derbyshire fire and rescue had taken \u201csignificant steps to learn and identify improvements following Storm Babet\u201d.<\/p>\n The Derbyshire fire and rescue service deputy chief fire officer, Clive Stanbrook, said in a statement: \u201cI would like to reiterate our sincere condolences to all of Maureen\u2019s family and friends who have lost someone they loved in devastating and distressing circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to give assurances that we have already learned from this incident, we have invested heavily in our systems and we have made changes to our operational processes, something noted by the coroner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The son of an 83-year-old woman who died during Storm Babet has called for more money to be invested in protecting homes from flooding. An inquest at Chesterfield coroner\u2019s court heard on Friday that Maureen Gilbert drowned in her home in Chesterfield after the River Rother overflowed on 21 October 2023 during the storm. Storm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[11845,1868,680,327,3003,586,2062,6935,3446,7081],"class_list":{"0":"post-19334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-babet","9":"tag-body","10":"tag-calls","11":"tag-defence","12":"tag-flood","13":"tag-flooding","14":"tag-money","15":"tag-mothers","16":"tag-son","17":"tag-storm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}