75 Years Aft
Guest column by Tracey O’Neill. Please visit TraceyC_Online the Blog
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Hurricane of
1938 (H1938), a storm of monstrous proportions that blew through coastal New
England on a cursory visit, carving out a gruesome path of death and
destruction, and leaving coastal communities forever pondering their
preparedness when faced with untold blows delivered by Mother Nature.
From Long Island to Rhode Island, hundreds of lives were lost as coastal residents, unsuspecting and unaware went about their daily routines reliant on weather forecasts that would later prove to be horribly wrong.
From Long Island to Rhode Island, hundreds of lives were lost as coastal residents, unsuspecting and unaware went about their daily routines reliant on weather forecasts that would later prove to be horribly wrong.
Extreme storm
surge, created by multiple factors including track of the storm and a high tide
at the new moon of the Autumnal Equinox, was responsible for the majority of
deaths. Entire communities were obliterated, landscapes changed and
families washed literally out to sea.
The Storm
Forming in the
Eastern Atlantic off the Cape Verde Islands, the storm developed and grew as it
wound its way across the Atlantic, turning North of Puerto Rico and tracking up
the Eastern Seaboard. Taking 12 long days to gather its wind, the storm delivered
its message of doom, devastation and death in a matter of just a few hours’
time.
According to
historical accounts, the massive hurricane’s forward momentum and speed, with
estimates anywhere between 60 and 70 mph were contributing factors to its
growth, strength and resultant widespread destruction. Unseasonably warm
temperatures of the northeastern Atlantic waters, also a contributor to its
consistent speed, did little to slow the storm’s march northwest toward land.
Embracing the Gulf Stream waters, the Hurricane of 1938 maintained its gruesome
velocity, as it whirl winded northwest descending upon seaside communities that
sat vulnerable and unaware of its violent efficacy.
Categorized
early on as a Category 5 hurricane while offshore the Southeastern U.S., H1938,
tracked North, decreasing only to modern-day Category 3 (Saffir-Simpson Scale)
status as the western edge of the storm made a pass at Cape Hatteras preparing
for its debut on land. Continuing on a northwest path, the storm rolled
over the waters of Long Island Sound, bringing violent winds, rains and raging
waters ashore between noon and 2 pm at Long Island, NY. Maintaining momentum
and hurtling forward, the storm moved ashore with Long Island feeling its full
effect by 2:30 pm.
Residents in coastal areas never received warning as seasoned forecasters predicted the storm would track east and out to sea. The eye, recorded as beginning its pass over Bayport, Suffolk County at 3:00 pm, engulfed all of Long Island by 4:00 pm. Witness reports said the eye’s arrival provided little respite from the battering winds and unrelenting deluge of ocean waters. Communications were believed to be wiped out immediately upon H1938’s landfall.
Residents in coastal areas never received warning as seasoned forecasters predicted the storm would track east and out to sea. The eye, recorded as beginning its pass over Bayport, Suffolk County at 3:00 pm, engulfed all of Long Island by 4:00 pm. Witness reports said the eye’s arrival provided little respite from the battering winds and unrelenting deluge of ocean waters. Communications were believed to be wiped out immediately upon H1938’s landfall.
The storm wiped
out seaside communities, fashioning a path of destruction that forever changed
the Long Island shoreline, carving out inlets, creating landmasses and
separating once land-inked communities by channels of sea.
Rhode Island falls prey
Winds along the
New England coast were estimated at sustained 120-125 mph. Communications and
weather stations were decimated along with the storm’s arrival, making attempts
at maintaining real time data null. At Watch Hill, Rhode Island, one gust was
recorded at 120 mph just before the tower and communications succumbed to the
assault of the storm.
The wall of
water coming ashore was so high and had such force that it was recorded on
seismographs as far away as Alaska. The storm surge appeared
as a dark wall, according to witness accounts. It was described by survivors as
what they believed to be a 40 foot high fog bank rolling towards shore. At its
approach, the optical illusion turned nightmarish as observers realized a solid
wall of seawater bearing down upon the shoreline. (Whipple 1940)
Along the Rhode
Island shoreline, coastal villages from Napatree Point to Galilee were
destroyed. Where once bustling seaside communities and fishing ports lay, the
dawn of September 22 revealed an oceanfront humbly battered and barren. An
estimated four hundred cottages at Misquamicut and additional two hundred at
Charlestown Pond and Charlestown by the Sea were swept away. The Westerly death
toll alone was recorded at 100. In Matunuck and Matunuck point, concrete slabs
remained where homes, cottages and seawall fell to the sea.
One account of
heroism chronicled out of Galilee had a local fisherman, James Gamache,
rescuing a group of five, with little but a rowboat and no oars. The five had
ridden the waves on the roof of a home, torn from its foundation and deposited
one half mile away along the state pier. Gamache is said to have left his 35
ft. dragger, secured to the sunken pier, and to have swam with his rowboat in
tow to the rescue of the stranded victims. (Goudsouzian 2004)
The storm surge
pushed quickly north up Narragansett Bay, wreaking destruction through Warwick,
Pawtuxet Cove and depositing a sea of water measured at almost 14 ft. above
mean tide in the state’s capitol at Providence. By 10 pm the Great New England
Hurricane had moved across New England into Quebec, leaving a devastating
lesson behind.
Historical
estimates calculated the destruction at $306 million; in today’s terms at
between $35 and $41 billion.
Historical information and photos courtesy of the
following:
NOAA; National Hurricane Center; Keith C. Heidorn, PhD.; Office of the Secretary
of State Rhode Island; New England Remembers The
Hurricane of 1938, Aram Goudsouzian; The Great Hurricane and
Tidal Wave, The Providence Journal Company (1938); The Great Hurricane 1938,
Cherie Burns (2005); The Hurricane, September 21, 1938, Westerly Rhode Island
and Vicinity, Cawley/Greene