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Set in the year 2000, just as mobile phones were becoming common , but were only used as phones and texting,  this novel, based about as closely on reality as I think it is possible to make it, whilst still remaining fiction, is an action adventure story set somewhere in the South West of the country.  It could be any country, although it is based approximately on an actual event that happened in the South West of England approximately 50 years ago.  In the novel, everyone who can remember that event, have convinced themselves that, due to the substantial repairs and improvements made to the area subsequently, such a disaster could not possibly happen again.  But it is just about to do so.  And even using the full range of modern communications as then existed,  such as computers, e-mail, the internet, and mobile phones, there is nothing that anyone could do to prevent it, nor to escape it totally.  For even with these tools available and used to the full, a serious communication problem occurs.
The story opens in November, and the main characters are introduced.  The story then flashes back to the beginning of October, and the next chapters set the scene leading up to the disaster.
The story mainly involves three different families, who, at the start of the story, did not even know each other.
The central characters are two teenagers, (who are one from each of two of the three families most involved in the story), they are Laura, a slightly disabled teenager who loves to ride her horse on the moor, and Dan, who is slightly younger, and is a real expert on motorcycles, which he rides over the land owned by his family on the moor.  From the third family is Ying Xi, a Chinese teenager and computer whiz, who is a year older than Laura.  He plays a lesser role in the story but his family features heavily throughout it. In fact, Ying Xi's mother and two younger sisters are the first victims of the disaster.
From here on, several events (in a series of interlaced chapters) resulting from the disaster are described, with virtually every chapter ending in suspense as to what will happen next, the results of which are often not resolved until several chapters later, by which time another aspect of the story has been introduced.
Once Dan, who is the first to understand the seriousness of the consequences, realised that something had to be done, and that he had to start doing it, the story carries on at a furious pace as each new aspect of the disaster unfolds, with just a few pauses to set the scene for the next part of the adventure.
Most of the main part of the story takes place in two specific periods, the first four hours of the disaster, after most people have gone to bed, and in the very early hours of the morning, before daylight, and then on through into the early hours of daylight, when they see properly for the first time the devastation that has been caused.  The story describes how the town set about coping, in the initial period before outside help could be brought in to this
remote seaside town, and the incredible bravery shown by both Laura and Dan, the two teenage central characters, who used their knowledge, and their wits, to the full.  And all of this had happened, just because it had rained.
During The story, the two central characters cross swords with one of the adults who takes over the supervision of the rescue operation, who refuses to accept that they could possibly have any useful role to play in the rescue.  They both find it very hard to understand why this should be, especially in the light of everything that they had done so far.
As a result of this, and other aspects of the story, several emotional twists emerge, with eventual explanations as to why the various people reacted in the way that they did, and the story concludes in a very emotional finale, as the various parties start to come to terms with the outcome of the disaster, and a number of  misunderstandings are cleared up.