East Coast Flood disaster

ONE of Britain’s worst killer storms struck eastern England coastal counties in 1953.

The East Coast Flood disaster claimed the lives of more than 300 people from Lincolnshire in the north to Essex in the south. And across the North Sea nearly 2,000 drowned in the Netherlands as a result of the storm surge. Hurricane-force winds funnelling down the North Sea coupled with exceptionally high spring tides and very low barometric pressure were responsible for the deadly wall of water that poured in across more than 100,000 hectares of low-lying land in eastern England on January 31.

Earlier in the day the storm – an area of low pressure near Iceland which suddenly deepened and travelled rapidly east-south-east down the North Sea and into Germany - claimed it first victims, 133 people on the ferry Princess Victoria, which sank in horrendous weather conditions between Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

At midday the low pressure system with a central pressure of 968millibars was over the North Sea.

During the afternoon the first visible signs of the approaching disaster were begin to show their hand in Yorkshire where sea walls were being breached on the North Sea coast.