23/09/2013 Inside Out East

A ticking time bomb on our beaches. If I had the equivalent of what an

average bird has on its stomach, I would have this. We have got the

latest research on the damage to wildlife and helping with the

clean—up. The Essex residents whose homes have

burnt ten times in ten years. The whole design is a disaster. It was

as if it was designed to be burnt. We get the verdict from a fire

expert and ask their council how they are going to make them safe.

James shares his inspirational story and says thank you to one of the

people who saved his life. I want to grab hold of her and say thank you.

Revealing the stories that matter closer to home, this is Inside Out

East. Tonight, Inside Out is in Lowestoft.

I know I am biased but I think that our coastline is absolutely

stunning. By bring the children here and go surfing here. There is

something that is threatening our beaches and the sea and that is our

rubbish. A marine expert looks at what it is doing to our wildlife and

what is being done about it. The beautiful east coast of

England, miles of sand and opened the. You just can't beat it. But

this stretch of coast, like many others in Britain, has a problem —

and it's caused by us. I'm defined by the sea but over the

years I've seen a lot less fish and lot more of this — plastic. There is

a lot less fish and a lot more plastic.

I've been diving the world's oceans for the best part of four decades.

And plastic waste is an increasing problem. Even the pristine looking

lake near my home has become a dumping ground for rubbish of all

shapes and sizes and plastic debris worries me the most. It's out there

in the ecosystem, getting into food chain and harming wildlife. And

as a top of the food chain predator myself, goodness knows what it might

be doing to me. They cannot use things like fishing nets and lines.

We do not put that in there. This is Scarborough, one of the east

coast's most popular resorts. We have been doing these clean—ups all

around the UK for 20 years. The main reason we are trying to do it is to

collect hard data on the type of letter that we are finding.

So armed with a bag, gloves and a healthy desire to get stuck in —

let's see what I can find. For me, it's an alarming problem. Especially

as nearly all of this rubbish is stuff we carelessly throw away. Even

a little bit of plastic like that, you know, it is only a small piece

on this otherwise clean beach but as soon as that gets into the sea and

starts to break down then the real problems begin. Then it becomes

micro—plastic and micro—plastic gets into the birds and fish and as. It

is in the food chain, a disaster. 70% of marine litter is plastic and

the vast majority of debris comes from the land. Here is the bottom of

a traffic cone. Sadly enough, UCB is blown everywhere. Boeing of

roadworks or... Big Es. —— blowing. You look at that and do not realise

that another huge plastic bag full of sand is inside it. This is

incredibly hazardous. When this does break down, it becomes a magnet for

more toxins. This is a seven metre long piece of hazardous waste. The

fibrous themselves, nylon or plastic rope. This breaks down, enters the

food chain and all of these bits leach out into the sea. Then I

think, I will take responsibility. I am now the owner of a seven metre

long piece of toxic waste. What will I do with this? I will drag it back

and I hope this might enter our recycling pack. All in all, not a

bad haul for an hour's work — nine kilos of waste But it's not just the

big items of plastic that we need to be worried about.

In its raw form, plastic is moved around the globe as billions of tiny

pellets that will be remoulded at a later date. And when these items

find their way into our oceans, you can see how easy it is for a fish or

bird to mistake them for a tasty snack. We are trying to see if

toxins attached to the service are getting into the tissues of the

food chain and we could be eating food chain and we could

these toxins if we are eating seafood. It is a big worry and there

is a lot of research going into that at the moment. It is a sobering

thought. You might wonder where we would be without plastic. We are not

the only species to have developed a special relationship with this

synthetic material. At Britain's biggest mainland gannet colony at

Bempton near Bridlington, generations of birds have learnt to

live with our waste, lining their nests with discarded plastic netting

and ropes. But wildlife and plastics and ropes. But wildlife and plastics

don't mix well. And to find out more, I'm going to get closer to a

sea bird than I've ever done before. These are fulmars, true ocean going

sea birds of the waters around Britain. They're beautiful animals

and close relatives of albatrosses. And here at the Dove Marine science

lab near Newcastle, research is underway to see how much plastic

waste they're consuming. The all sorts of rubbish from the Ocean

service. Almost every of them that flies out here has some plastic

their stomach. On average, it would be about 0.3 grams in the North Sea.

In their stomach. It might not look that serious in a small jar but I

always scale up the form to a human body mass. In that case, this is the

average content of one of thestomachs. If I had the

equivalent, I would have this? The problem of all of this in cuts is

that it would take up food room. Yes.

Researchers have been collecting dead fulmars — and carrying out

autopsies — and the results have been surprising. What do we do

first? On the face of it, these are healthy

looking birds that have just met an unfortunate end. Initial checks show

them to be adults. But to see why they died, we're going to have to

take a look inside their stomachs. Not a diseased, not covered in foil.

It has not had any form or anything like that. It is a relatively

healthy looking example. It is not a pretty sight seeing what these birds

have eaten. That is certainly plastic. That looks like, that could

be a plastic box, top of a bottle or anything. The amazing thing is, is

that was in me, it would be 100 times the size of this. Something

about that big sitting in my stomach. It would have an enormous

effect. Not only would it take up valuable space were food should be

going in but as this thing is reaching out its heavy metals and

other toxic chemicals, it would affect my health. It'd be easy to

think that there's not much that can be done to halt the rising tide of

plastic waste. Let's face it, there is an enormous amount of plastics

going into our seas. The danger is, though, we could feel paralysed by

the scale of the problem. But we can do something about it — like the

Clean Tyne project on the Tyne in Newcastle. By collecting stuff in

the river, we stop it getting into the sea, It's much easier than

collecting it out there and this project collects about 400 tonnes of

marine debris every single year. —— into the sea. It is much easier.

At the government's marine research centre in Lowestoft, our plastic

waste problem is being taken seriously. European directives in

2016 will mean we'll all have to do more to stop plastics getting into

the sea. In a marine environment, it can take hundreds of years for

plastic to break down. But do these items ever disappear? It might look

like we don't have the items that they are fragmented in so many

pieces that are not visible to the naked eye but are still there. It

has not disappeared, it is very different form. Does that include

biodegradable plastic? Summit just degrade faster so it looks like it

is gone but it is not. The big question is just how far up

the food chain this plastic waste will actually go — but there's

way to minimise the risk to wildlife and ourselves — and that's to do all

we can to stop plastic getting in the sea in the first place.

It really is up to us to make sure that our rubbish does not end up out

here. My e—mail address, if you want to get in touch with me is on your

screen. Coming up, James shares his inspirational story of survival. I

have forgotten about three weeks of my life from the day of the accident

and its unlikely I will ever remember it. We all want to feel

safe at home. Imagine how you would feel if the buildings where you

lived had caught fire ten times in ten years. That is the reality for

hundreds of members of an estate in Essex. They are desperate for their

estate to be made safe. I went along to get the experts view. It was

approximately just after two o'clock in the morning and I opened the

front door, the flames were coming up the stairs, it was roaring. My

daughter was asleep, I woke her up and my loft was ablaze and my

carpets were smoking and I got my daughter out first and the guttering

was alight and the drips of flame, of guttering, were dropping on me.

It was the most petrifying experience you could ever go

through. It's is a nightmare that all of us dread, a fire at home —

and it could happen to anyone of us — but what made Barry Maicher's

situation even more serious was just how quickly the fire spread through

his home here in Basildon. The fire was so intense it destroyed eight

properties. 90 people had to be evacuated. When the fire brigade

pulled into Bockingham Green here, it was totally, all this block was

totally engulfed within three minutes. Unbelievable. But this fire

is far from an isolated incident. Barry and his daughter had only been

living on the Felmores estate for just over a year and in that time

they'd seen two fires which destroyed three flats before the

fire that gutted their own home. There has since been a fourth fire,

and the one common factor between all these incidents is that once the

fire started it spread quickly — really quickly. The 700 homes here

were built in the '70s. There's a mix of council and private housing.

The problem is that both the inside construction and external cladding

are made of wood. Inside and out. For years the residents have been

pleading with the council to either pull them down or make them

Many of them literally fear for their lives. I am in fear, this is a

three—storey home and my bedroom is on the top floor so I worry about

how to get out because it's a long way down. There is no fire escape

and I worry about getting trapped at the top of my stairwell and not

being able to assist my children on the first floor. And then it's a

case of jumping out the window if case of jumping out the window

you can't get down. I don't think fear is the actual word for it — I

don't think there is a word to replace fear, because I've got two

little ones and they are knowing that there is fires going on

so it is beyond fear. We can take every precaution we can, turn

sockets off, we can close doors, we can have extra fire alarms, but none

of that will stop the rate of the fire that spreads when. Fire breaks

are not sufficient and there's no escape route for people that can't

get out like these gates that are locked and

stairwells. My seven—year—old still won't sleep. I'll put him to bed at

half six, seven o'clock and it's still nine ten o'clock before he'll

even settle/ He'll be up and down the stairs, he won't sleep unless

I'm sitting in the room with him and then he'll be awake two or three

times a night. I mean, I speak to a lot of mums up the school and the

play school and that, and there are still quite a number of us that are

still sleeping in the downstairs because we are not quite settled

enough yet. And I know people that have bought their homes here that

are now bending over backwards to try and sell them again. A recent

government report found fires in timber—framed buildings spread

further than in brick—built properties. Essex Fire and Rescue

Service automatically send three fire engines to any incident at

Felmores because fires here have spread so fast. The Fire Service has

made recommendations for changes, but it's Basildon

overall responsibility to ensure overall responsibility to ensure

safety here. But you can understand why people living here are terrified

because there have been four major fires. Some people have told us

they've escaped with their lives, some people have said to us their

children won't even sleep at night. You can understand why people are so

frightened? Absolutely, though if you actually look at the fire

statistics, there have actually been less fires per 100 properties on

this estate than on the rest of our housing stocks. But it is a

perception. That may be the case there have only been, in your words,

a small amount of fires here on this one estate. One fire is one too

here due to the design spread here due to the design spread

quickly, which is why it's so frightening. And we have to address

the problem in the stock that we've got — if we had a perfect world, we

would demolish the estate and build it in brick, but the money is

not available to the council to enable us to do that. Would you want

estate of my choice, but I'd be estate of my choice, but I'd

prepared to live here if there was nowhere else for me to live. But the

problems aren't just with the design of the estate. We asked building

inspector and fire safety expert Arnold Tarling to take a closer look

at the homes here and what he found was shocking. I am looking

underneath for gaps between the timber and the frame, up which fire

will spread if there is a starts below there. I have already

checked below and there is a lot of rubbish underneath there, a

cigarette end which has dropped and not been extinguished, that sets

fire to the rubbish and the firewood starts travelling up the timber.

We have problems here straightaway — We have problems here straightaway —

this is an ideal area where you would have rubbish dumped and up

through. Between the cladding and through. Between the cladding and

the wall itself? Yeah, large gaps — you get a fire, you've got the

roofing up there, any fire in here will go straight into the roofing

and then spread along, you know the whole design is a disaster — it's as

if it was designed to be burnt. There are also problems in the

stairwells — the walls may look solid but behind them is a timber

frame, so any damage can seriously affect the length of time the area

can contain the fire. There's a through here that's changed it from

one hour to no hours. So that hole renders this useless. It renders the

render useless, yes. So it's pointless having this here because

of that hole, so what would happen then if there was a fire, would it

go through that hole, would it rip through quicker? It would rip

through quite quicker and we've got a nice timber staircase to add to

the fuel load. And the problems continue up in one of the lofts. So

what have you spotted up there, Arnold? Well, basically the party

wall has been punctured by timbers going through and somebody

some expanding foam in, which won't do any job and it will be flammable

anyway. Arnold, what's your assessment of what you have seen

here? Felmores has major major problems in regards to fire safety —

strip all the cladding to remove the strip all the cladding to remove the

asbestos cement boarding behind it, and to re—clad it properly in

accordance with current building regulations. I'd even recommend

stripping the roofs and re—roofing to ensure that the party wall

structures are properly fire—proofed. We put these findings

to Basildon Council, who told us although it can make improvements to

council homes, it can only advise private tenants. The council said

rubbish is cleared regularly. It said the holes in the stairwells had

already been reported and would be repaired. Many of the other issues

would be addressed through major improvements being carried out on

the estate over the next year. Come. We've announced this week that

we are going to install a sprinkler system in the properties, so that is

one means of damping down the fire and you can see behind us the new

cladding — this is the first section to have been

cladding which is again a fire—resistant cladding, so there

they will combine together to reduce they will combine together to reduce

the risk of fire. was unconvinced by the improvements.

more than a rain screen that could more than a rain screen that could

crack under heat in minutes. Underneath is a combustible membrane

and plywood sheet which he says would burn and spread fire. In his

view, though slightly improved, the building has not been fire—proofed.

The council told us the new cladding met current building regulations,

had been chosen in liaison with Essex Fire and Rescue Service and

resist fire for 75 minutes. But resist fire for 75 minutes. But

former resident Barry Maicher says he is not convinced. Hello. It is

great to be here. About 2.5 years ago I nearly lost the chance to say

that again, so believe me it is great to be here.

James Piercy is lucky to be alive. Nearly three years ago, James and

his family, who live in Norfolk, were involved in a terrible

accident. His life would never be the same again. We were just having

an ordinary trip out in the car but there was a freak blow out in the

tyre, the tyre burst and the car spun off the road and hit a tree.

The result of that accident, tragically my wife was killed and I

suffered a very serious head injury. Fortunately, my children who were in

was very hard, coping with the loss badly hurt. Coming out of

was very hard, coping with the loss of my wife and I took care for three

children. —— and trying to care three children. On a bad day, I

didn't want to go to work or get out of bed. The children kept me going.

I had to get up to look after them. James spent nearly a month at

Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. A scientist by profession, James now

uses his first—hand experience to give talks to help increase

understanding of brain injuries. Blessed hemisphere controls the

right—hand side of your body, and the damage to the left—hand side

caused me more problems than the single clump the right—hand side.

Although James now appears perfectly OK, he's still not completely

recovered from his injuries. In the impact, the head stops, the brain

actually shifts inside and that causes some damage to the brain so

what you can see here is quite a large area of bruising and bleeding

on the brain and the bit we can see here at the front, that part of the

brain seems to deal with behaviour and planning and things like that. I

have been fortunate not to suffer from any personality or behavioural

change spikes to that damage. The results of these kinds of injuries

area enormously from person to person. —— the results of these kind

of injuries they are enormously. —— variation or miss leaf.

James's brain injury left him with a number of side effects. His speech

and balance were affected, while the area behind his right eye was

damaged, leaving him with double vision. I asked a friend to take

some video of me walking in the garden to see what it is like. If

you notice, I keep looking down, I am looking at my right foot because

I was not sure where I was, damage to the left—hand side of my brain

meant that the awareness of the right—hand side of my body was

reduced and that meant that walking down slopes could be quite difficult

for me. Can you do this movement with both eyes closed? There is

mixed success, I can see, but you are fairly close. You don't need to

look at that finger to know where it is. Try it with someone else's

finger. That is what this sense of proprioception is. You know where

that finger is because it is yours. I suffered from a reduction of that

sense, because as well as the damage to the high orbit that we talked

about, I also suffered damage to my brain. While out filming with James

in Cambridge on a particularly hot day? he began to feel unwell?

James's old symptoms started to re—appear. I am getting a little bit

tired. And sometimes I get eight which —— I get a twitch and my words

do not come out quite right. I probably need to eat something soon.

And then I will be all right again. To you know what is going on? What

is your brain doing? I think it is just working a bit harder to do

normal things. We stopped filming at this point, so

we could take James somewhere to eat and drink.

An hour later. And James has had a meal, a burger and chips and a pint

of lemonade. I have had a rest, I have eaten something, I am feeling

fine again. My speech is better, I am not shaking my head as much as I

was before, I am ready to go onto the next part of the day. The

accident to his brain has left James with no first—hand memory of his

accident. Everything he knows comes from what others have told him about

it. Imagine you are working on the computer and your child comes along

and pulled the plug out. That would be bad. You would go into safe mode

when you restarted. A strange thing happens when you have a bad head

injury called post—traumatic amnesia, it means you forget things.

I have forgotten about three weeks of my life from the accident

is unlikely I will ever remember is unlikely I will ever remember

that. It's typical of James to want to know as much as he can

happened to him. He's come to happened to him. He's come to

Cambridge Airport today to meet one of the people who saved his life.

It's the first time they've met since the accident. I am feeling

nervous. I am not quite sure what this is going to be like, I am a

little worried that I am going to cry. I feel like I just want to grab

hold of the person and say you. I will try and be appropriate

if I can. Hello. It is so good to be conscious. It is nice to finally

meet you. I am pleased you are doing well. It is just crazy to meet you

but thank you so much. You are very welcome. Do you remember anything

about my accident? I do. What do you remember? I can't remember anything.

It was very upsetting for everybody, your wife passed away and we were

trying to hide that from you and your children will . It adds a lot

of extra pressure on people. We try to do the best for people from a

medical and emotional point of view. When we got to you, you were

semiconscious and you were thrashing around like this which is often what

people do with a brain injury, so it is difficult to oxygenate you

because you will not let us and it is difficult to get access to you.

You will not let us. What we managed to do was quickly, almost, hold you

down to get the cannula in and we could see date you a little bit and

we could take over the king after the amount of oxygen that is going

to your brain. We had to give your brain the best chance of recovery.

And the recovery has been fantastic. I still sometimes get quite tired,

and find things difficult to do. I am looking forward to building a new

life and going back to work and I think I am lucky. I am lucky to live

in England, lucky to be near the air ambulance with a doctor involved,

lucky to be near Addenbrooke's Hospital. It is when you come if you

have a bang on the head. So I am really lucky to be able to stand up

and talk to you guys all about it, so thanks very much for coming

tonight. APPLAUSE

That is it from Lowestoft. You can e—mail me if you think there

is anything we should be looking at. I will see you next week when I will

be revealing these stories from the East. The machines which can lose

your fortune in moments. Is it time to banish them from our High Street?

And the return of the otter is a conservation success story, so why

do some people say culling them is the only way to save other wildlife

in our rivers? Revealing the stories that matter closer to home. That is