Remembering another January 31st (i)

I often think that water is my element, but water is deceptively dangerous… and not just for those who swim in it or sail or take boats on it… sometimes even in a person’s own home water can devastate and have a deadly power.

Sixty-four years ago, on the night of January 31st and the morning of February 1st 1953, due to  extraordinary weather conditions – a deep Atlantic depression swept eastwards past the north of Scotland and roared southeastwards through the North Sea. There were northerly gales on the western side of this depression, and they forced the sea water southwards. There was a high spring tide and the storm surge roared towards the coast of eastern England – and across the channel to the Netherlands, and the sea defences were utterly inadequate.

These days with mass communication  it is possible to give some warning, even in the most ghastly and dramatic events, but in 1953 all people had was the radio – not many houses had telephones, and even if they had, it would have been almost impossible to get in touch with enough people in time.

So it was night-time, pitch black on a January night, a storm was raging, and along the coast of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent a tidal surge more than eighteen and a half foot high above normal sea level – as high as many of the cottages and bungalows along the coastline, rushed ashore blown on winds gusting at over 125mph.

People were safe and snug at home, children in bed, parents reading the newspaper or doing the chores, when out of the darkness, born on the wind, came water.

Tragically people died… 307 people in England, 19 in Scotland, and 1800 poor souls in the Netherlands. In England, 160,000 acres were flooded – the land unusable for years afterwards – think of the impact on agriculture… the whole infrastructure of the affected areas was down, gasworks, power stations, transport, every form of transport – road, rail and river, sewerage, fresh water… the cost was reckoned then to be £53,000,000 – today that would equal over £1.2 billion…

You can read more about it here, and also what has happened since to try and avoid such a disaster – as far as possible:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/in-depth/1953-east-coast-flood

Visit this page to see what happened to our Dutch neighbours across the sea: