Editor’s note: This opinion piece is by Peter Dannenberg, a resident of Cabot.
During the night of Sept. 21, 1938, my wife’s grandmother, Eva May Clough Joyal, huddled at the foot of the stairs with her four children in the house where we live in Cabot. She believed they would be safe there. Gale-force winds howled, but they emerged unscathed. Some in Vermont did not.
At 2:30 p.m., a hurricane blew ashore at Bayport, Long Island. It was the strength of Katrina when it hit. Back then, hurricanes did not get people’s names. Newspapers dubbed it the Long Island Express.
The storm gouged several inlets into Long Island beaches. Some still exist. The pounding surf was strong enough to show up on seismographs in Alaska. In Westhampton, N.Y., winds swept a movie theater two miles into the Atlantic; the projectionist and 20 patrons drowned.
The monster raced north across Long Island Sound into Connecticut and Rhode Island. Church steeples toppled in wind gusts up to 186 miles per hour, the second-highest winds ever recorded on Earth. The 18 to 25 foot storm surge swept hundreds of shore homes into the sea and sank thousands of boats.
In New London, Conn., a fire burned a quarter-mile of the business district. Firefighters battled the blaze in neck-deep water, but it burned out of control until southerly gales shifted to the northwest.
In Rhode Island, winds funneled the tide into Narragansett Bay, straight at downtown Providence. Observers saw what they thought was a fog bank blowing ashore; it was a 40-foot high wall of water. Water rose to almost 14 feet in Providence’s streets. It was quitting time. The water, rising in minutes, swept away people who were leaving work. Several drowned in cars. Waves swept away a lighthouse and its keeper. Rhode Island had almost 400 deaths.
The monster raced up the Connecticut River Valley. In Massachusetts, 99 died. It rained for three days before the hurricane. Ground was saturated; bridges washed away.
In Hartford, the Connecticut River crested at almost 20 feet above flood stage. The flood circled Hartford for four miles. Western New England flood levels surpassed records set two and one-half years earlier.
The hurricane flattened forests and apple orchards around Burlington, a train derailed in Castleton, ocean salt spray splashed Rutland buildings, but Vermont suffered just five deaths. The storm moved to Quebec by 9 p.m. and petered out somewhere inside the Arctic Circle.
The 1938 Express killed about 700. It destroyed or damaged more than 57,000 homes. It took months to clear some washed-out back roads of downed trees. Property damage was around $400 million, during the Great Depression. Now fixing the same damage would cost about $6 billion. With higher populations, airports and power plants, the toll could be much more.
Photos and films of the 1938 storm:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/hurricane/
http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurr1938.htm&date=2009-10-26+00:16:55
http://www.googlee.com/search?q=1938+hurricane&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=SKQ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnsu&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=veRWToYi5eLRAaalxMEM&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=791&bih=434
