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’s 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 Babet claimed seven lives across the UK, led to more than 10,000 people being evacuated from their homes and caused in excess of £450m in property damage.
The assistant coroner Matthew Kewley delivered a short narrative conclusion, stating that Gilbert had “died in her home due to drowning in flood waters caused by Storm Babet”, and that he believed there was still a risk to life in her road owing to improper flood defences.
“I’m 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,” he said.
Paul Gilbert, who found his mother’s 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.
“More money does need to be invested in floods because this is something that obviously is going to keep happening,” he said. “More 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.”
The inquest heard that on the evening of the flood, fire and rescue services “did all they reasonably and safely could” to save Gilbert but had to stop once it got too dark. A request was made for Gilbert’s home to be reinspected the following morning, but due to a Derbyshire fire and rescue service’s control room systems going down, the request did not come through and no reinspection occurred.
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.
“The failings of the system going down and messages not being passed on is hard,” he said. “Because if that had have happened and the fire service had have gone in and found my mum, I wouldn’t have had to find her which has been one of my biggest nightmares since that day, finding my mum, but systems do go down.”
Kewley said he was “satisfied it cannot be said, on balance, that the outcome necessarily would have been different if that reinspection had taken place” and that Derbyshire fire and rescue had taken “significant steps to learn and identify improvements following Storm Babet”.
The Derbyshire fire and rescue service deputy chief fire officer, Clive Stanbrook, said in a statement: “I would like to reiterate our sincere condolences to all of Maureen’s family and friends who have lost someone they loved in devastating and distressing circumstances.
“I 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.”
