A CATASTROPHE which devastates the United Kingdom and creates a ripple-effect across the world is the subject of a gripping new novel by West Devon-based author Richard Doyle.
What makes ?Flood? even more thought-provoking is that, though a work of fiction, the story rests firmly on scientific fact.
Flood is based on a freak of weather known as a storm surge. Meticulously researched, it recounts a chain of events that takes the lives of thousands and drives home the fact that Mother Nature is ignored at our peril.
Released in paperback last month and coinciding with the 50th anniversary of a devastating flood which claimed dozens of lives in Eastern England, Flood is based around Richard?s belief that the Thames Barrier is just not high enough.
The barrier, built in the 1970s at huge expense, was designed to protect London from a repetition of that disastrous 1950s flood.
But Richard believes the barrier?s safety margins are too close for comfort ? and that in the wake of global warming, the type of storm surge which occurred in 1953 will become a more frequent occurrence.
Poring over the only map of the London floodplain in existence, based on outdated projections from the 1950s, Richard said the area affected by a flood over-topping the Thames Barrier was ?simply huge?.
?It would affect something like 400,000 houses. You are talking of at least a million people ? then there?s the hospitals like Guys and St Thomas?s ? think what a job it would be to move critically ill people from these places.?
Flood recounts in frightening detail the passage of the storm surge, as the River Thames bursts through embankments, tributary rivers back up and flood, drains disintegrate and filthy, toxic, sewage-laiden water invades homes, schools and businesses, many actually built below river level, with terrifying swiftness and awesome strength.
Written in the present tense, which takes some getting used to initially, the chain of events, starting with a deep, deep depression in mid-Atlantic, flow with clear logicality.
The book is set in the run-up to Christmas and Richard describes with clinical attention to detail the effect of a drastic flood on the enormous Blue Water shopping centre, built in an old quarry and packed with Christmas shoppers.
He said: ?They have terrible problems with traffic there anyway. If water started to get in ? and it doesn?t have to be much ? nobody could get out. Two feet of water will flood a car. That water is going to be very cold, very dirty; there will be old people, people with babies and children, people not wearing sensible shoes, it would be very difficult to even walk.?
Elsewhere in Flood, Richard describes the nightmare scenario of trying to evacuate tube tunnels with failing emergency power and blocked phone lines rendering communication nigh-on impossible, while the surge travels innexorably towards the city centre.
In the book, the flood, disastrous in its own right, is raised to unimaginable levels of destruction when a super tanker crashes at Canvey Island, sparking a huge inferno which sees refineries blowing up like vast bombs.
Flaming rafts of oil float upstream with the surge, igniting horrific fires at industrial units and chemical plants along the Thames.
So how likely is a flood of this proportion?
Richard said: ?You tend to get nasty events about every 50 years. There was a bad flood in 1927 which killed eleven people in Pimlico when people were mainly drowned in basements. Then there was the 1953 flood. We?re overdue for something unpleasant to happen.?
Richard said global warming started with the industrial revolution and, like a super-tanker, having built up momentum will be be hard to slow down or stop.
?With global warming you get more storms, there will be more surges ? the number of northern hemisphere hurricanes has gone up about 70% since the 1980s and it?s noticeable that the number of times the Thames Barrier has had to be closed has increased very markedly in the last ten years.?
The idea for Flood followed an approach by a film company interested in a previous book Richard wrote on a similar subject.
?It started me thinking ?I wonder what the situation is now?? I became very alarmed at what I found,? said Richard.
The timing of the paperback release ? an accident as the original publication date was delayed by the September 11 terrorist attack ? has sparked considerable media attention in Richard?s theories.
He has been interviewed by Radio 4?s Today programme and has appeared on Channel 4?s Richard and Judy show.
He said expert opinion on the likelihood of a mega-flood in the South East was mixed, some agreeing there was a potential problem, others dismissing his theories as unecessarily alarmist.
?When I was on the Richard and Judy show, I was with a former chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police, who was in charge of emergency planning for the Met until 18 months ago.
?He said if it had not have been for 9/11, this type of disaster would have been the big fear for London,? said Richard. ?We have a potentially very worrying situation.?
l Flood is published by Century and is available in hardback price £17.99 and paperback priced £6.99. You can also visit the website at http://www.floodlondon.com">www.floodlondon.com
l Richard Doyle will be signing copies of his book at Bookstop in Tavistock tomorrow (Friday) at 11am.