The spell of wet weather which has afflicted the country
for the last month culminated in a tremendous deluge on Sunday night and Monday. Serious floods, involving great damage and discomfort, have occurred in the Midlands, but East Anglia has suffered most. In particular, Norwich was visited on Monday with a rainstorm of such violence that nearly six inches fell in twelve hours, and on Tuesday the city was isolated owing to the flooding of the railway lines, the collapse of bridges and embankments, and the interruption of telegraphic and telephonic communications. When they were restored on Tuesday night the situation was truly deplorable. Norwich, in the phrase of a visitor, was converted into a city of roofs and house-tops. Business was at a standstill, no trams were running, and in the poorer, low-lying districts, where the water was thirteen feet deep, ten thousand people were rendered homeless. The police promptly organized a rescue service by boat, and the women and children removed from the inundated houses have been temporarily sheltered in schools and public buildings. To make matters worse, the rescue work on Tuesday night had to be carried on in the dark owing to the flooding of the electric power-house. Communication with Norwich by rail was completely cut off, passengers being conveyed by road from Wymondham, while within a radius of a few miles no fewer than eighty bridges were swept away.
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