News and photos from SolarAid at a flooded Sunrise Festival

Somerset was hit by flash floods last week that wrecked the region and led to the Sunrise Celebration festival being stopped on the day it was meant to start.

This was going to be our big event of the year. As you probably know, SolarAid is the charity of choice of the Sunrise Celebration, which is the leading sustainable and renewable energy powered festival in the UK. It's an amazing festival: solar powered stages, compost toilets, only organic food... and fantastic music and workshops.

Here's a short update on what happened...

It's dangerous in there...
The previous weekend, Lachlan and Laszlo, solar engineer volunteers from Solarcentury, came over to build the 300 watt solar system for our festival Sun Hut in my back garden. We had to finish building it on Sunday indoors because of the constant rain outside. Then Monday was even worse, with a huge downpour.

On Wednesday, we drove down to Somerset through torrential rain. When we arrived at the festival gate, the security guard looked us in the eyes and said: 'Be careful. It's dangerous in there.' We all looked at each other with a mix of anxiety and bemusement...

But he wasn't far from the truth. As the rest of the team put up the tents on the camp site, I ventured into the festival arena to find Henry, the man from the Geodesic Dome Company who was meant to put up our two geodomes that would be the SolarAid Sun Hut. The arena was already in a worrying state. I trudged through more varieties of mud than I had ever realised existed: liquid mud, squashy mud, mud mixed with grass, slippery mud, caked mud...

Henry was stuck in his converted army truck in the crew campsite. It's where we should have been staying, but it had already been cut off because it was half under-water. Henry wasn't allowed out because his huge truck would churn up the mud and make things worse. After wading through more mud and water, and with the rain still pouring down, I eventually got to meet him. Rumours were already out that the festival might be stopped, so Henry and I decided to see how things evolved before putting up the Sun Hut.

Later that evening, SolarAid staff John, Anna, Ruth and more volunteers arrived. We decided to get the van towed by tractor into the arena so we could unload the equipment the next day. While we waited in the queue for towing, John and I spoke to one of the festival helpers, who explained to us about a weather device invented by an Australian scientist that could control the weather. Unfortunately, the Australian authorities were hunting him down to confiscate the weather device, so he'd gone into hiding... Shame, we could have done with that machine!

At 1am we were in our sleeping bags, having done all we could to stake out and reserve an area of land in the arena that was still relatively dry. It had rained all day, but the evening sky was clear.

Above: Anna, Andy and Ruth - three SolarAiders braving the floods.

The sky is blue...
Thursday morning we were up early to get things going. The sky was blue, the air was fresh and our spirits were high. This could all work out! After a quick breakfast, it was down to meet Henry again. He still couldn't move his truck, so volunteer Gwyn's 4x4 came, yet again, to the rescue. It took us over one hour to negotiate our way from our campsite to Henry's site - a trip that in normal conditions would take 5 minutes. Cars and vans were stuck everywhere in the mud, waiting to be towed by local farmers in tractors. But we got there, filled up the 4x4 with the geodome materials, and headed back to the reserved spot.

Everyone worked hard all day. It was going to be fantastic. We went to see the Sunrise organisers and they confirmed that it was all going ahead.

But then some bad news. A traffic jam of festival-goers trying to enter the site was extending on to the dual carriageway. The local police were now on the scene, turning people away and telling them the festival had been cancelled. I spoke to Dan, one of the organisers: 'It's not cancelled, but do you know anyone in the police force who can help?' Unfortunately, I didn't.

Back in the arena, the SolarAid Sun Hut was coming into shape under Anna's expert guidance. Everyone was working really hard. Inside, it looked very cosy. Outside, the 300 watt solar system looked fantastic, thanks to our engineering specialists Lachlan, Sonya and John. The SolarAid flag was a great landmark.

I went for a walk around the other marquees and venues: some terrific psychedelic trance music was already pumping out of the Firefly Solar Stage for their sound test. Another stage was trying out its impressive light show. People were putting so much work into this festival - if it went ahead, it would be fabulous. I flicked through the programme: so much excellent content.

Above: the SolarAid Sun Hut - two geodomes and a 300 watt solar system.

But the storm clouds are coming...
That's when we noticed the gathering storm clouds and Anna remembered Henry's prediction earlier that day: he'd heard there would be a thunderstorm at 6pm. It was 5.45pm. We all rushed back into the Sun Hut and sealed it as the rain started to fall.

It was a downpour. For 1h30, the rain fell in bucket-loads. We peeked outside to find the festival site totally flooded: rivers of water, lakes of liquid mud. There was no chance the festival would survive this.

All 15 of us - SolarAid staff and volunteers - looked at each other. There was only one thing left to do. We turned our solar ghetto blaster on full - pumping out some trance - and cracked open the beers. With a cheer, we decided that there was no way we'd let all this go to waste.

At 7.30pm the storm subsided and I went to speak to some of the festival organisers. It was now officially off. After working all week at fighting the floods and the mud, and then bringing in festival-goers as fast as possible onto the camp site, the organisers realised they just couldn't go ahead with it. The arena area was mostly underwater and it wasn't draining away.

Everyone felt utterly, totally and completely gutted. That was months of constant hard work just flooded. It would have been the most fantastic festival. The programme looked amazing, ranging from electronica to dub, reggae, ska and ambient on the music front, to workshops on wind turbines, carbon offsetting, healing, yoga, recycling, transition towns and going zero carbon. I'd been invited to give a talk on 'how solar will revolutionise the world' and to partake in a debate by the New Internationalist magazine on 'how to save the world'. Anna and Ruth had plastered all the festival toilets with SolarAid posters. The main stage was going to have huge SolarAid banners all over it as well as projections of the SolarAid video. We had thousands of stickers and badges to give out. Anna had secured a sponsorship deal with Howies, the leading t-shirt company. Vodafone and Regenersis were providing mobile phone recycling bins, with proceeds going to Global Cool/SolarAid.

We walked back to the camp site, all of us covered in mud from head to toe. Thousands of festival-goers were crowded there, just outside the entry to the arena. Despite the immense disappointment, our enthusiasm was still high. In true SolarAid spirit, we partied until 3am.

Next day, we went to see the festival organisers. They were devastated, yet at the same time amazingly positive. Dan Swan, our main contact at the festival and one of the friendliest people I've ever met, said that they intended to honour all the tickets and commitments, including with SolarAid, and to run the festival again soon. Indeed, it would be a huge shame for the UK's only renewable energy powered festival, with such a strong environmental and social agenda, to come to a halt.

And they were right to be positive: the latest news is that Sunrise is partnering with the Big Chill festival this year, which is terrific.

Above: much of the festival site was underwater.

The threat of climate change...
My final reflection is on a different note. As we discussed in the car on the way home, erratic weather patterns such as these flash floods are going to get worse as climate change accelerates. We experienced in a small way over the weekend what millions of people are experiencing in a much more severe fashion in countries such as Bangladesh and Burma.

The sense of urgency is intense. There's a crucial need for organisations such as SolarAid and Sunrise to keep growing, whatever the challenges, and to raise awareness of the threat of climate change and how renewable energy is one of the most important solutions.

Onwards and upwards.

Nick
SolarAid Director