Lynmouth Flood

The Lynmouth Flood occurred on the night of the 15–16 August 1952, principally affecting the village of Lynmouth, in North Devon. A storm with heavy rainfall, combined with already saturated soil and flood debris, led to the flooding of the village and a total loss of 34 lives.

Background

On the 15th and 16th of August 1952, a storm of tropical intensity broke over south-west England, depositing 229 millimetres (9.0 in) of rain within 24 hours on the already saturated soil of

From seven o'clock last night the waters rose rapidly and at nine o'clock it was just like an avalanche coming through our hotel, bringing down boulders from the hills and breaking down walls, doors and windows. Within half an hour the guests had evacuated the ground floor. In another ten minutes the second floor was covered, and then we made for the top floor where we spent the night.[1]

The River Lyn through the town had been culverted to gain land for business premises; this culvert soon choked with flood debris, and the river flowed through the town. Much of the debris was boulders and trees.^{[citation needed]}

Overnight, more than 100 buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged along with 28 of the 31 bridges, and 38 cars were washed out to sea. In total, 34 people died, with a further 420 made homeless. The seawall and Rhenish Tower survived the main flood, but were seriously undermined. The tower collapsed into the river the next day, causing a temporary flood.^{[citation needed]}

At the same time, the

The root cause of the flood was heavy rainfall associated with a

Similar floods had been recorded at Lynmouth in 1607 and 1796. After the 1952 disaster, Lynmouth village was rebuilt, including diverting the river around the village. The small group of houses on the bank of the East Lyn river called Middleham between Lynmouth and Watersmeet was destroyed and never rebuilt. Today, there stands a memorial garden.^[4]

On 16 August 2004, a similar

A theory has spread that the flood was caused by secret cloud seeding experiments carried out by the Royal Air Force (RAF) between 1949 and 1952.^[6][7][8]

The theory was fuelled by a 2001

"Survivors tell how the air smelled of sulphur on the afternoon of the floods, and the rain fell so hard it hurt people's faces."[6]

Meteorologist Philip Eden has said the experiments could not have caused the accident: "it is preposterous to blame the Lynmouth flood on such experiments".^[10] Eden also said "The storm which caused the 1952 disaster was not confined to the Lynmouth district."^[10] while in reality "The East and West Lyn rivers, which drop rapidly down from Exmoor, were swollen even before the fatal storm."^[6]

References