13/02/2014 Midlands Today

We have been talking to people coping with the floods. They rolled

across the bridge. Army troops helping out. 100 troops from the

Royal Irish here in Worcester and I have another 300 troops and vehicles

on standby for the whole of the West Mercia area. We'll have a command

centre at Worcester police station, where we co`ordinate military

activity across the area and those resources will be working with

police officers to work out where we can best get the Army out. From the

air, the vast expanse of water is breath`taking. Whilst some areas

have have been flooded, the defences along the River Severn in

Worcestershire are still holding. These flats were evacuated yesterday

by the river. Today, we found one couple who had waded back in. We

came back to check in. How is it? Dry at the moment. What are you

being told to expect? Well, another inch of rain tomorrow. It could be

worse than what it is now. Do you think you'll stay for now? We're

staying until tea`time and then we're going up to the Travel Lodge.

Levels in Worcester remain high, but the sunshine was bringing people out

and back into the city centre. I've walked into town and I'm going to go

down to the bridge to see how bad it is compared to the previous years.

The shops are fine. I was in work yesterday and that was packed. It's

not stopping people coming in. But the drop if visitors is still a

worry for business. Getting people back into the city, despite the road

closures, remains a priority. This is causing a lot of distress for a

lot of people. The centre has been in lockdown, even though the shops

are open and car parks are there. Most of the car parks, two thirds,

have been open. The good news is the city centre is still open for

business. The bad news ` this river isn't going to be going down

significantly any time soon, which means road closures and more

disruption for some time yet. The longer it goes on, the tougher it

gets, but for one shop, business is up. They're buying lots of wellies,

they're literally walking out of store. Worcester has endured many

floods before and they're confident here they'll survive this one,

however long it takes. That gives you a good idea about how

the people are coping down on the ground around the floodwater. Today,

the BBC helicopter was up in the skies above the city taking pictures

which graphically illustrate just how severe the flooding is. As you

can see if these pictures, Worcestershire county cricket ground

is completely under water. The start of the new season is just two months

away. Earlier I spoke to Dave Throup from the Environment Agency and I

asked him what we can expect in the days ahead. The story will be about

surface water and the smaller rivers reacting, so a lot of trouble on the

roads. That will feed into the main river and push levels up slightly.

Away from the floods, high winds have been battering parts of our

region, with particular problems in Staffordshire and Shropshire. We

have reports from both counties, starting with Liz Copper, who

reports on an extraordinary picture of a school roof tumbling across the

county. Repairs under way at homes in Stoke after a huge sheet of steel

sliced through roof tops. This was the scene last night, as rescue

teams were called to remove the enormous piece of metal, which had

flown through the skies, caught by the storm`force winds. Neighbours

described their relief. Nobody was seriously hurt. Frightening. I

thought it was a bomb. We didn't know whether it was a gas explosion.

All we could see, I went in the garden, all I could see was

something hanging over the roof. Great big massive thing. Very lucky

nobody was hurt. Very, very lucky indeed. Especially how it crashed

through that bungalow. Families whose homes have been damaged are

now staying with friends and relatives. We opened the front door

and you hear the whistling sound and the thing landed. It was scary and

nervous. We were in shock. The sheeting had been ripped from a

nearby school, before becoming embedded in the roof tiles. This is

just one of many, many incidents dealt with by the emergency services

last night. In a little more than two hours, Staffordshire police took

more than 1,000 calls. In the police control room they described events

as unprecedented. The volume of calls was much higher than we

normally anticipate. It was certainly as much as we would expect

on a business Friday Friday or Saturday and enup to the level for

New Year's Eve. As work continues to make the homes safe, emergency teams

are bracing themselves for more unsettled weather ahead.

There are more dramatic scenes in Shropshire, where the gales for

roofs from buildings. Schools are closed and trees uprooted. The

dramatic moment a roof is torn off a training centre in Whitchurch.

Hurling through the air and damaging four cars on a neighbouring office

car park. Meanwhile, in Shrewsbury, the damage caused by another flying

roof. This time at Wilfred Owen Primary School. Pieces of metal and

fibreglass now entwined with toys in a playground reserved for the

youngest children here. Very frightening. We had children in

school still at that moment, because we had extended clubs running. We

had to make sure the children and staff were safe and we could

evacuate them as quickly as possible and get them away. There's obviously

quite significant damage. Some very upset children when they realised

what happened. Parts of the roof also wreaked havoc for another

school sharing the same site. Severndale is the country's largest

school for children with special needs and the clean`up operation

will need to be meticulous. We have on the spectrum and children with

severe learning difficulties who don't understand the dangers, so

they could pick up some fibreglass up and that's dangerous, so we have

to make sure that the areas are exceptionally clean. It's much

calmer today, but yesterday this is the roof from the school and it

travelled all the way from there right the way around to neighbouring

homes. There are sheets of metal and fibreglass all hurtling through the

air. It was just like in America where you see the storms. Elsewhere,

Shropshire council workers spent much of the day dealing with scores

of trees, which fell victim to the weather. From floods to gales,

seemingly no let`up in the chaos being caused by the elements.

And you can see more of the week's flooding pictures on our Facebook

page. Don't forget, for the late ef information on the floods and how

they're affecting where you line, tune into your BBC radio station for

the latest: That's it from me from Worcester at

the end of a very unusual dry day. Unfortunately, I don't think it's

going to last. Now the forecast with Rebecca.

We have a Met Office yellow weather warning in place for more heavy rain

tomorrow and strong winds to come as well. Overnight, the riSk is a

colder one, because we see the temperatures falling away under

clearer skies so we'll get patchy frost developing. Some icy stretches

coming tomorrow morning. Temperatures hover around freezing

overnight. Winds easing, but as we start tomorrow, we have this next

band of heavy rain working its way up from the south`west. Ahead of

that, we'll start to see the cloud building and then that rain making

its way through the early hours of tomorrow. On the leading edge, we

could see is turning pour wintery and the rain sticks with us through

the day. Another 25 millimetres. Gust of wind really picking up, up

to 50mph. The national picture is on the way.

few days and now we go to the weather centre for the national

forecast from Nick Miller. Hello, in this winter of perpetual

autumn,