‘She rang me to say there was water coming into the house’ – This is climate breakdown

Location Chesterfield, UK

Disaster Storm Babet, 2023

This is Paul Gilbert’s story

Paul Gilbert’s mother, Maureen, lived in Chesterfield. In 2023, Storm Babet claimed seven lives across the UK, led to more than 10,000 people being evacuated from their homes and caused in excess of £450m in property damage. Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, and experts have linked some of the damage caused by Storm Babet to the climate crisis.

My mum rang me to tell me there was water coming into the house. She sounded fine, she wasn’t panicking, just wanted to let me know so I wouldn’t worry. But when I rang her back later, the telephone was dead.