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Extreme Weather |
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East Anglian coast escapes disaster by inches
• Thousands evacuated as huge tidal surge approaches
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 On the Web |
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By
Miss Krakotoa , Weather editor
Friday,
9 November, 2007
The tidal surge striking East Anglia and Kent missed the high tide by a matter of minutes, allowing flood defences to hold out. The Environment Agency said if the waters had risen by a further eight inches, it would have caused "utter devastation".
On Thursday night councils across the East Coast region between Kent and Humberside activated their major incident plans with the emergency services and hospitals on full standby.
As dire weather predictions yesterday evening warned of widespread destruction, an unprecedented operation spearheaded by the Environment Agency saw more than 1,000 people evacuated from their homes and the emergency services put on standby for a major disaster.
With evacuations complete and 10,000 homes under threat, all anyone could do as dawn broke was to wait and hope with the waters due to reach their highest levels shortly after 8am. The Thames Barrier was closed and householders along the Kent coast were told to expect flooding.
With the towns of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft considered under greatest threat, there was huge relief as the waters subsided just as they reached the top of flood defences before subsiding. People were able to then move back to their homes.
The brunt of the surge was born by the seaside village of Walcott, 20 miles north of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where conservatories were crushed, walls torn down and lawns ripped up. A caravan park wrecked as the flood defence wall crumbled under the pressure of water. Elsewhere windows were blown out and brick walls destroyed. A caravan and 15ft wooden boat were tossed into a road and gardens were left under water.
As Gordon Brown said the Government was ready help affected communities, the Met Office warned devastating tidal floods will become much more common in coming years.
Simon Hughes, the Environment Agency's spokesman, said a tidal flood along the East coast was their "nightmare scenario" because the land is so flat it floods incredibly quickly.
He said: "We were a hair's breadth away from disaster, it really was that close. Another eight inches and the water would have breaches the defences. Eight inches doesn't' sound much but when you're talking big waves believe me, it is. "The land along the East coast is low lying and flood waters there rise very quickly, cutting people off and trapping them. There are also a huge amount of caravans on the region which cannot withstand such a situation."
A spokesman for the Met Office added: "The tidal surge was just behind the high tide and it wouldn't have taken it long to catch it up. Luckily they missed each other otherwise it would have been a very different situation. It wouldn't have taken much for things to have been a lot worse."
He added: "Research from our scientists suggests that tidal surges will become more common, from one every hundred years to one every ten."
The tides along the coast were as high as they were in 1953, when a flood claimed the lives of 300 people, but while the doomsday predictions failed to materialise, localised flooding caused chaos. There were no reports of substantial flooding in Kent.
It wasn't all bad news for locals though. Off the coast at Gorlestone-on-Sea, Norfolk, surfers took advantage of the unprecedented conditions to ride 4ft high waves.
John McLellan, 19, a shop worker from Gorlestone, said: "It was the best I've seen it. The surge pushed the water right over the sandbanks and gave the waves power. We got a lot of speed off it."
Some of this content was derived from the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The Naked Reader
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