Worst flood threat for sixty years.

In the early hours of tomorrow morning the East Coast and Thames Estuary may experience the worst tidal surge since the devastating floods of January 1953. Part of the problem then was the lack of preparedness and adequate communication. Times have changed and flood defence today bears no comparison to that night when as an excited young boy I was evacuated from Canvey Island. The conditions are the same; a spring tide, low atmospheric pressure and a Northerly gale combining to force a "hump" of water down into the bottleneck the Southern North Sea. But with modern communications and a far better understanding of how to deal with this kind of emergency, we could, with a bit of luck come through this with no loss of life at all. A stark contrast to the three hundred lives lost that one night in 1953. Learn more about those floods here.