I wrote up some thoughts about this flooding and what we can do to help. Floods – the answers in the land
Strikes me that the fire brigades could be equipped with specific flood pumps but I suppose we're back to money. Thing is the sums involved are very small when you look at the cost of floods. According to HMG we spend £0.8 billion on flood prevention but flooding costs £1.4 billion on top of that. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Another thought - perhaps the fire brigade could pay for flood pumps and assistance via a charge to the insurance companies. After all, it saves them money.
That is a rather small amount to spend on flooding.
The SFRS (Scottish Fire and Rescue Service) has them, 6 different types, but the bosses see it officially as not their responsibility. They are there to rescue people and it's an additional service they can provide. So if there's no danger to life it's not priority. Local remit will vary. Up here they could charge you because it's an additional service that they can do, but in flooding their reluctant to do so. Since one of the methods requires them to drain the tank on the engine to pump water out, they'd be putting lives at risk because they might not be able to refill the tank. Since the local mains water sources including hydrants could be contaminated because they often burst and things get in-breaking the engine. Had there been danger to life then sod the machine, but only if there's danger to life.
Also in flooding travel is hampered, especially when your average engine has a 7 and 1/2 tons weight load capacity (12- 15 tons total average) so they need to be gone in an instant. They don't have the time take the engine out of circulation to pack up and it would delay turn out. Putting other lives at risk in a large scale ongoing incident where danger to life can occur any time. Were it a quiet day they'd probably be happy to help out, but in a large scale emergency they can't afford to do it.
The council should have to set up a service to drain houses, they should have access to water pumps. Gully suckers, the drain cleaning machines are designed to deal with manky water. There are companies who will do it, any that dig holes or plant hire companies. But locating one in a flood and getting there first.