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GLOUCESTER - Flood waters across huge swathes of England rose to 60-year highs on Monday, submerging vast tracts of land and leaving thousands of people without running water or electricity.
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, in an update to parliament, warned that the emergency was "far from over and further flooding is very likely."
Eight severe flood warnings are currently in place, he said. "We believe that up to 10,000 homes have been or could be flooded," he added. About 45,000 homes have lost power.
The River Severn is more than five metres above its normal summer height, swollen by some 5.6 inches of rain over the weekend.
"We have not seen flood levels of this magnitude before," an Environment Agency spokesman said. The previous high was in 1947.
The downpours also sent a surge of water down the Thames through Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The 5 inches of rain that fell on Friday was the largest daily amount since records began for the area in 1968.
The Agency said the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) had reported that their site at Burghfield in Berkshire, which assembles, maintains and decommissions nuclear warheads, had experienced severe flooding.
"Several parts of the site, including a number of buildings and the site's sewage treatment works, have been affected," the agency said.
"AWE staff have been sampling and analysing the floodwater from the site. They have confirmed that there has been no escape of radioactive materials from the site."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Gloucestershire on Monday and promised more money to help with drainage and flood defences.
"What we saw here was a month's rainfall in some places in an hour, something that was quite unprecedented, and put enormous pressure on water and the emergency services," he told reporters.
Up to 140,000 people in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham may be without mains water for possibly two weeks after pumps at Severn Trent's Mythe Water Treatment Works in Tewkesbury became engulfed in flood water.
People living in Cheltenham were being urged to use water sparingly, with only about 20 hours of supply left.
More than 150,000 bottles of water are being distributed in the region and small tankers of water are being driven to stranded households.
Emergency services have restored electricity to about half the 40,000 homes left without power after a sub-station in nearby Castle Meads had to be shut following a surge in the water level early Monday.
More than 1,000 people had to spend a second night in emergency shelters after being evacuated from their homes and people in Gloucester have been told to be ready for evacuation.
There have however been no deaths reported from the region.
The Environment Agency has been criticised for its speed of response to the floods, but Benn praised its work.
He denied that spending on capital investment in flood defences had been diverted away from the agency's budget, saying it had increased from 300 million pounds to 600 million pounds during the past 10 years.
He told the BBC that at least 90 per cent of flood defences were in fair or better condition.
"They are designed to work to a certain level but if the water level gets above that then they are themselves going to be over-topped," he said.
- REUTERS
