Cumbria experienced their biggest flood on record two years ago and that all happened as the result of Storm Desmond. Swathes of infrastructure were damaged and now Lucy Alderson is working hard to find out how work has progressed since. The rebuild has now reached its halfway point and now is a great time to look back to see what has been done.

The biggest flood in Cumbria's history happened in December 2015 and the storm itself went on and on, raging through the North-West. It is said that 1.15 tons of rain fell in around 6 days and this is enough to fill Wembley Stadium over 300 times. That's a shocking figure to think about and it is also said that nearly 8,000 families were evacuated. 2,000 businesses experienced the effects of the storm and the whole area was in a sense of limbo as to what damages were done and even if anything could be
done to save the buildings that were present.

Flooding in this region is rather common, and there are strategies in place to try and help the county if a flood does occur. The problem is that the area was not prepared in how to handle the damages of a flood as serious as Storm Desmond and no response plan was present either. Those who work in construction jobs will understand more than anyone how much rain can affect buildings, and with a huge range of broken infrastructures, there was no real way of telling how much the local area would have been affected. Making sure that the county was reconnected with neighbouring towns was essential and over 123.6m was given as emergency funding so that Cumbria County could try and repair any of the broken bridges and even the highways.