Seventy years have now passed since the terrible floods of January 31, 1953 – but for those who were there at the time, the memories of that night remain vivid.
A total of 307 people were killed along the east coast of the country in what was the worst peace-time disaster our region has ever seen, with exactly 10 people dying in Great Yarmouth and Gorleston.
Malcolm Metcalf was 19 years old and living on Magdalen Way.
“I was in the Palace Cinema watching ‘High Noon’, a western starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly,” he says.
Gale force winds could be heard outside and with half an hour of the film still left, the manager suddenly jumped on the stage, urging people who lived in Cobholm and Southtown to go home at once as there was severe flooding.
“When I left the cinema, I could feel the force of the hurricane-like winds," says Mr Metcalf.
A dustbin lid flew over his head, tiles were falling from the roofs.
“It was almost impossible to walk and bitterly cold. I made my way to Baker Street where a crowd had gathered. The road resembled a river. Walking along Pier Plain I saw a fireman rescue people from the prefabs."
Later that week, volunteers were asked to report to Yarmouth Town Hall to help people clean up their homes.
Mr Metcalf was among the volunteers.
“I will never forget walking from the Town Hall armed with a mop and bucket and rubber boots to Isaac Road in Cobholm and knocking on the door of a house and asking if the family needed help," he says.
"My offer was too much for the family and they broke down and cried."
The house was a mess. In the kitchen, packets of tea, peas and biscuits were floating in two feet of muddy water.
"I spent over four hours working with them. Things felt and looked a lot better after a fire was lit.”
Susan Wooden, who was six years old at the time, was living on Havelock Road in Great Yarmouth.
"My parents had been up during the night watching the water come up the road and hoping that as our house was on a slight incline, it wouldn't reach us,” she says.
"Thankfully it didn't but I remember the sandbags we had outside our front door, just in case.
"Being so young, I thought it was very exciting as we had no electricity for a while and had to use candles to go to bed and mum cooked us meals on a Primus stove.
"Dad and his brother managed the Pleasure Beach at the time and when they heard that their sister-in-law’s mother was stranded in the bedroom of her house in Cobholm, they used one of the boats from the Pleasure Beach boating lake to rescue her.
"Later on, when the floods had receded, I was able to see the dirty ‘tide marks’ halfway up the living room walls of the neighbouring houses that had been flooded.
"What a mess it must have made. I was also taken along the seafront and I remember how the large paving stones had been lifted up by the force of the water.
"I also recall that every child at our school who had had their house flooded received a box with some gifts in it. I was quite envious as I didn’t get one. I never did find out what was in those boxes."
Tom Hatchett was a young police constable on the night of the floods.
He was riding his bicycle from his home in Newtown to sign on for his shift beginning at 6am the next day at the police station on Yarmouth South Quay.
On reaching Lawn Avenue he noticed the road was flooded and he rode quickly through flooded streets to report the situation to the police station.
He was given a rowing boat and he patrolled the Blackfriars area and heard screaming from an upstairs window from one of the alleys which had been built outside the town wall.
Mr Hatchett was able to get to the distressed woman into the boat by carrying her through the lower storey of the house.
She then started screaming again saying that she had left her false teeth behind.
On asking where they were in the house, he was told that they were in the kitchen. The young constable said this was underwater and it would be impossible to find them and the woman was taken to a place of safety without her teeth.
He discovered another woman who had died of hypothermia which he reported to headquarters and continued, cold and wet, to ‘navigate’ the beat.
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