London: More than one million people have been affected by the worst floods in over 60 years in the UK as the humanitarian crisis in central and western England deepened today.

Its getting difficult to make fresh water tankers and bottled supplies reach to the people in the affected areas and supermarkets have had a rash of panic buying with police being called in to control desperate crowd.

Thousands of people were poised to evacuate their homes with the banks of the two largest rivers in Britain, the Severn and the Thames, threatening to burst.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced an independent review of the handling of the floods.

The RAF airlifted 160 stranded people to safety in 55 operations using Sea King helicopters in its biggest peacetime rescue operation. The Army and emergency services were battling to protect power supplies for 5,00,000 from rising waters. Up to 350,000 people in Gloucestershire could be without running water for up to two weeks, authorities said as they warned that it might be a year before some evacuated families could return to their devastated homes.

England has been paralysed with scores of towns and villages submerged or cut off. Up to 10,000 homes are either flooded or at risk of flooding in Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire.