Flood Relief Fund now closed

The Gloucestershire Flood Relief Fund is now closed. The Trustees of the fund met for the final time on the 7 July 2008 and have now allocated all monies donated to the fund. No new, or further, applications will be accepted. The Trustees would like to thank everybody who has contributed to the Fund during its existence.

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The last posting

On Friday 20th July 2007 it rained in Cheltenham. It was expected, we’d all seen the forecasts and listened to the warnings, but this day was to be different. Our streets became rivers, our roads closed and our public buildings became refuges for the trapped.

We started this blog on the following Monday and your response was wonderful. Thank you for all the supportive comments during the emergency.

We will no longer be posting to this blog and will be leaving it as an archive of those few days in the Summer of 2007 when Gloucestershire become the focus of the world’s attention.

Temporary leisure facilities will open soon

It’s amazing that a temporary building can look this good, air conditioning, wheelchair access, showers and changing facilities etc. Things are coming along well.

The rest of our leisure facilities face a long haul back to normal, but a good opportunity to make improvements along the way. Everyone will remember that photo of the flooded entrance, now a hive of building activity.

Across the county, schools will open as normal

The majority of Gloucestershire County Council’s schools will be opening as normal for the beginning of term next week, despite many having suffered damage during the floods.

However, a number of schools, youth centres, children’s centres and other facilities will still be dealing with the impact of last month’s flooding.

Thank you

Gloucestershire flood relief fund

The Gloucestershire flood relief fund website is a great success, with the fund total now standing at £644,399. Take a look at the website for the latest news on fund raising events across the county.

Bowser

Funny, how a word that was perhaps just a quirky dogs name suddenly became a word that everyone was talking about just a few weeks ago.

Introducing Mr Sylvanus Bowser…

Mr Sylvanus Bowser was an American from Indiana who invented the ‘self measuring gasoline storage pump’ launched in 1905. It consisted of a 50 gallon metal storage tank, housed in a wooden cabinet, which was set up in front of a store. The petrol was then dispensed into the car through a flexible hose, driven by a manual suction pump.

He went up to set up his own company, S.F. Bowser & Company, which expanded to deal with other types of commercial liquid. Mr Bowser was so famous that he even had a street named after him in his hometown – Bowser Avenue.

Eventually bowser became a generic term for any type of self propelled liquid tanker dispensing fluids. Here in the UK we use the term to refer to those wheeled water tankers we all grew to know and love during the recent flooding emergency.