|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Thu, 30th Jul 2020 15:21:00 |
|
Coastal erosion: The 'forgotten' community left to fall off a cliff |
Emma Tullett was sitting on the sofa scrolling through YouTube music videos when her home began to fall apart.
A window blind came crashing down and as her partner tried to reattach the fitting, he saw a row of trees slowly sliding over the nearby cliff edge.
"He said 'you need to get out' and I think that's when I just lost it a little bit," the 42-year-old said.
She gathered up her four children, throwing coats over the youngest, aged six and eight. In the dash for safety, she didn't even have time to put on their shoes.
Over the next four days, she watched from a distance as her home on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, went over the cliff in stages. The slow process was "like torture", she said, and left a strange sense of "relief" when the whole thing finally fell on 2 June.
"I've got nothing," she said. "All we got out with was the pyjamas we were wearing."
Across England in the next decade, it is estimated that up to 2,000 homes could face a similar fate due to coastal erosion, which is expected to accelerate with climate change.
Thousands more properties have been protected by costly coastal defences.
So, why are some areas saved and others left to fall into the sea?
Like other small communities nationwide, Ms Tullett and her neighbours on the Isle of Sheppey have been told that, simply put, their homes are not worth saving.
The island's relatively soft cliffs, made mainly of London Clay, have for centuries been slipping into the Thames Estuary, exposing internationally renowned fossil deposits.
Read original full article
|
|
Atlantis Viewpoint
|
| |
|
|
Back to Featured Articles
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Energy News
|
|
| |
| |
