Gales bring chaos to Bexhill

At a time of year when County Highways staff would normally expect to be more concerned with tarmac melting in the sun, they and contracting tree surgeons were kept busy across the district from the early hours of the morning.

The driver of a Ford Transit van had a lucky escape in Elmstead Road. He returned to his vehicle to find a big poplar had toppled.

The weight of the 2ft diameter trunk had crushed the van's roof. Highways staff and workers from Bexhill Tree Surgeons found a large beefsteak fungus had infected the tree.

The tree surgeons trimmed a younger tree which was leaning at a 45 degree angle in adjoining Hastings Road before moving on to Walton Park where another tree affected by fungus had been blown flat.

Elsewhere, fallen branches and smaller debris littered the roadsides.

Heavy overnight rain brought a new hazard for drivers using the De La Warr Pavilion car park. A lake of trapped rainwater formed along the parking bays on the northern side.

By noon, large branches were being torn off a tree at the Pebsham playpark at the junction of Seabourne Road and Martyns Way. Local councillor Charles Clark put up protective barriers until workers arrived to cut off other branches which had been broken but which were still hanging. As they struggled to clear the debris more branches fell among them.

Workers fought a losing battle as the wind toppled more than 100ft of the steel fencing around the De La Warr Pavilion. Only the fact that the sections were bolted together prevented them being blown into Marina.

It was not so much the severity of the storm that caught the town napping as the time of year. Bexhill is well used to sou' westers - particularly in Autumn. But, though forecast, this big June blow included violent and destructive gusts. It also brought the thermometer plummeting, a condition made even more unseasonal by the wind-chill factor and emptied streets of shoppers.

Bexhill Coastguard Station Officer, Dick Rowsell, said: "There's certainly a heavy sea running. I should think the wind's about Force Eight or Nine so it's pretty rough.

"It is a bit unusual to get a storm like this in June but we had one over the August Bank Holiday a few years ago that was a lot worse.

"It's just lucky that it hasn't coincided with a Spring tide or we might have been in trouble."

PICTURED above: A tree down in Walton Park; This van was crushed by a fallen tree in Elmstead Road; The Pavilion car park looked more like a giant paddling pool; steel fencing round the Pavilion blown down.