Hurricane baby is 16 now

Her waters broke at around 3.45am exactly 16 years ago today - a night when Bexhill suffered catastrophic damage in the worst storm in memory.

Now her daughter Rebecca - a 7lb 14oz baby when featured in the Bexhill Observer's Great Storm hurricane edition - is all grown-up and today (October 17) celebrates her 16th birthday.

It could hardly have been a more turbulent welcome into the world.

Ambulance men battled their way through the devastating storm and finally found their way to Mrs Elliot-Noye's Leasingham Gardens home after discovering three roads blocked by fallen trees.

A five-mile 'dash' from there to the Buchanan Hospital in Hastings took an hour, with the ambulance driving over trees and onto pavements.

Elizabeth said: "In some ways it seems a long time but in another way I remember it like yesterday. It was a pretty bumpy ride and quite a panic but we got there in the end."

And she says Rebecca's rough start to life has rubbed off.

"She's quite clumsy," she said. "Only last week she broke her wrist falling out of the bath. A lot of people said at the time I should have called her Gail and she does charge round like a tornado half the time."

Rebecca is in her last year at Bexhill High School and is thinking of going on to study child care.