The Sky Turned Green...
a Cautionary Tale
on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the No-Name Hurricane* of 1938;
the catastrophic storm that changed Rhode Island forever
by Donna Montalbano
*Hurricane: derived from "Hurican", the Carib god of evil.
Wednesday, September 21st, 1938, Rhode Island: The day dawned bright, warm and rosy. It had
been a beastly summer; oppressively humid, incessantly raining. But this morning the sun shone from a
cerulean sky, and the sea was as warm as bathwater. It was as if Summer had bestowed a guilty, farewell
kiss on Rhody's cheek: Hey, sorry I wasn't more fun; see you next year!
The local children left for school, fisherman set out for sea and housewives could finally, after days of
rain, hang out their wash and depend on the sunshine to dry it in no time flat. At the waterfront at Watch
Hill, on the barrier island of Napatree and along the four mile strand at Misquamicutt, the radiant day was
a parting gift to the summer colonists still lingering at their seashore mansions.
Oh yes, there were signs and portents that this would be no ordinary day. No one divined them in
time. Later, some did wonder: where had the seagulls gone that morning? Why weren't the birds
singing? The air was as motionless as a held breath. Skeins of high cirrus clouds threaded the sky.
And though the ocean swells were grand, the long rollers were forming very far out and the
sea seemed unnaturally high.
In Providence, the weather was lovely; sunny and a mild 75 degrees. Vincent Piscatelli was 17 years
old, hard at work at his job at Paramount Sales on North Main Street. At some point during the morning,
he opened the back door of the shop to speak to the trash collector and the wind slammed the door shut
behind him so aggressively that it shattered the glass panes. Golly, that was strange!
In Providence, and throughout Rhode Island, the day would get much stranger. By afternoon, along the
southern coast of Rhode Island, the sky took on a greenish-yellowish cast. "Mustardy," some called
it, "jaundiced" or "ochre". An artist of the day described it this way:
"The sky changed to a rich greenish yellow. The green appeared murky, and the yellow transparent. All
seemed glazed over with a very light and delicate golden red."
The air exhaled; sodden with humidity it huffed and puffed and found its voice: hollow,
haunting, emanating from everywhere and nowhere. Reverberating, amplifying, escalating, the
wind reached out and wrapped itself around the telephone and electric wires and commenced a high
pitched scream; as bloodcurdling as the shriek of a mother whose children have been swallowed whole
by a sea monster.
Nobody knew that a leviathan Category 5 hurricane was bearing down on Rhode Island; no, not bearing
down: it was already here. Its acceleration had been astonishing, moving 50, 60, 70 miles an hour,
passing seven states in seven hours, the fastest known forward speed of a hurricane ever
recorded. Dubbed the Long Island Express, it smashed into Long Island at 3:30 pm; with wind gusting at
180 mph and storm tides of 14 to 18 feet. The force of the storm surge was so cataclysmic that
seismographs at Fordham University in New York registered the impact as an earthquake. And it was
such an enormous storm, 500 miles across with a massive 50-mile-wide eye, that no sooner than it had
destroyed the Long Island and Connecticut coasts; then it was at Rhode Island's doorstep. A gust of 120
mph was recorded at the Watch Hill Lighthouse before it collapsed into the sea.
Along the Rhode Island coastline, any warnings from the south came too late. By 2:30 much of South
County has lost telephone and electricity. The hurricane came ashore as a Category 3, some say 4,
which by definition means winds from 131-155 mph and storm surges generally 13-18 feet above normal.
It smashed into Westerly, Rhode Island, at the worst of the worst possible time: at astronomical high tide
made higher by the autumnal equinox and the pull of the new moon. Westerly would suffer the greatest
loss of life in all of Rhode Island.
Witnesses at the height of the fury saw what they thought was a 40 foot high fog bank rolling in from the
sea. But it wasn't fog, it was a solid wall of water...
There was no time to run. No place to hide. The rising water chased families up staircases from first
stories to attics until there was nowhere to go but the roofs. They clung to each other and held on for dear
life, until the winds tore the roofs off and parents and children were plunged into the boiling sea. Some
were lucky and able to ride the roofs, or catch hold of flotsam or jetsam and be carried
miraculously inland, across the ponds and salt marshes and bays to the relative safety of the mainland.
But often as not the wind flung them out to sea, never to be seen alive again.
Ninety-nine percent of shoreline from Quonochontaug to Charlestown was destroyed. On
Napatree Island, 44 summer homes and the yacht club building were swept away. The next day, this two
mile spit of land was completely barren, not a stick or brick remaining of human habitation.
At Misquamicut Beach: 500 beach homes gone. Charlestown, Charlestown Beach and Charlestown Pond
lost nearly 300 homes. At Narragansett Pier, the giant rocks of the seawall were pounded into gravel,
Sherry's Pavilion, a Pier landmark, was thrown across the highway like a toy; and the famous Dunes
Club was in ruins. Many of the grand old bathing pavilions along the shore were unsalvageable and,
unlike the Dunes Club, never rebuilt.
Block Island lost 36 of its 56 fishing boats.
Newport and Warren Counties were incommunicado. Bailey's Beach, Newport Beach and Island Park in
Newport County were obliterated. The hurricane chopped up Jamestown into four parts.
But it wasn't over yet. Where do tens of thousands of tons of furious roiling seawater go after it's
obliterated low lying ocean-facing settlements and fragile barrier islands? In Rhode Island, where else but
into the open arms and inviting mouth of Narragansett Bay; portal to the peaceful towns circling its
shores, Barrington, Warwick and East Greenwich; and the backdoor route straight into the heart
of Providence.
So the fearsome storm surge exploded into Narragansett Bay.
In Warwick, 700 permanent homes and hundreds of summer bungalows were destroyed.
But arguably, the most tragic event of the '38 hurricane happened at Mackerel Cove on Conanicut Island
in the middle of the bay. A school bus full of children was forced to stop in the middle of a narrow
causeway. The bus driver, believing it was the safest course of action, was attempting to get the children
out of the bus when three giant waves hit; seven children, four of them from the same family, were swept
to their deaths.
"When you're alone and Life is making you lonely, you can always
go...Downtown..."
1938 was an miserable year for many reasons, sandwiched as it was between the lingering Great
Depression and the looming prospect of another World War. Rhode Island was mired in poverty
and unemployment; many Rhode Island families were subsisting on less than $25 a week.
To the average Rhode Islander, Providence was the Emerald City. Yet accessible to everyone. The
trolley cost a nickel. If you couldn't shop, well, you could window shop, at Diamond's, Cherry and Webb,
The Boston Store, Gladdings, Kay Jewelers, Liggetts and J.R. Foster. Prince or pauper, you could roam
the glittering Arcade on Westminster Street, the first indoor shopping mall in America. There were no
fewer than five major theaters: the elegant Albee on Westminster, the Strand on Washington Street, the
Majestic at Washington and Empire, Fay's, the vaudeville house on Union, and the opulent Loew's State
Theater built just ten years earlier at the corner of Weybosset and Richmond, which to Depression-era
families was a fantasy palace of plush carpet and velvet curtains and crystal chandeliers.
As early as 3 o'clock the wind picked up in Providence, to many it sounded like a freight train bearing
down on the city. And then all along downcity streets, glass starting exploding out of store windows. One
witness who took refuge in a cafeteria between Westminster and what is now Kennedy Plaza, remembers
a woman being blown through the window into the restaurant.
The columned Greek Revival Shopping Arcade with entrances on both Westminster and Weybosset, had
become a wind tunnel. When shoppers tried to leave, they ran into a wall of wind as unyielding as
cement. Some people found themselves crammed into the tiny compartments of revolving doors and then
like something out a Marx brothers movie, spun round and round and round. The wind ripped away a
chunk of the roof of the Public Library, and the structure atop the Turks Head Building. It tore off the metal
roof of Union Station.
At about 5 PM, driven by 120 plus mph winds, came the flood.
The top of Narragansett Bay funnels into the Providence River. On the afternoon of September 21st,
1938, the narrowed neck of the bay piled the storm surge to unimaginable heights and with tremendous
force blasted it into the river where, within minutes, it inundated the mile square business district and
three miles of industrial waterfront where it ripped up wharves, and catapulted two massive coal barges
clear across Water Street. A tug was lifted up and dropped down on the cribwork of the India Point
Bridge, and bolted sections of dock washed onto Dorrance Street, a quarter of a mile
away. The flood rampaged through the streets and alleys, rising three feet every ten minutes;
swallowing people, cars, trucks, trolleys, newsstands and street signs. Bobbing along in the torrent was
building debris and detritus, plus an odd assortment of goods and equipment from the restaurants and
shops: desks, stoves, hats, shoes and even half-naked store dummies; who managed to maintain their
composure despite the indignity of their situation.
The noise alone was enough to drive a sane person mad: a hellish cacophony of human screams,
howling wind, breaking glass, short-circuited alarms, trolley bells and the incessant blaring of automobile
horns.
There was to be a wedding that day at the Narragansett Hotel in downtown Providence. The catered
affair was ready and waiting, but then the hurricane hit, and the groom got stranded at Union
Station. Various orphans of the storm took refuge in the hotel; found their way into the reception room and
gobbled up all the food and downed all the champagne. However, the affair had a happy ending, bride
and groom were reunited and married at midnight by candlelight by a Providence judge. Then the newly
married couple, Joe and Lorraine Fogel, waded through the streets to spend their wedding night at the
Biltmore, flanked by National Guardsmen with bayonets and guns. Because by then, the looters had
come.
Rhode Island writer David de Jong described the surreal sight: "They came neck-deep or swimming;
holding flashlights dry above them, rising out of the water and disappearing through the demolished store
windows. At first, there were few. Then there were hordes assisting each other. They were brazen and
insatiable. They took everything. When a few policemen came past in a rowboat, they didn't stop their
looting. They knew they outnumbered the police. They seemed organized, almost regimented, as if they'd
daily drilled and prepared for this event..."
Hundreds of moviegoers were stranded in the city's five movie theaters, swimming up to the balconies as
the water rushed in. Hundreds of workers were stuck, high but dry, on the second and third floors of office
buildings. Many threw ropes out of windows to pull people out of the floodwaters and up to safety. The
H.L. Wood Boat Company launched rowboats from their display windows to rescue those clinging on to
streetlamps or swimming for their lives. Dozens of the stranded found refuge on the upper steps of City
Hall, a building itself erected on pilings since downtown Providence is really marshland covered over by
landfill.
Over at Paramount Sales on North Main, young Vincent Piscatelli watched as the wind toppled a mighty
oak up on Benefit Street. And across the street, the carved wooden trellis surrounding the steeple of St.
John's Church broke apart and was carried off by the wind. Although that section of North Main wasn't
flooded, Vincent knew he wouldn't be able to drive across the city to pick his father up at his aunt's store
on Atwells Avenue. But at least his father was safe and dry on Federal Hill, so he started out for his own
home in Mount Pleasant when he passed a young woman with a baby walking in the opposite direction,
bent over and struggling against the stinging wind. "I can't let her walk home alone in this storm, with a
baby," he thought, and he turned his car around and urged her to get in. He drove her to her destination,
and then turned around again and headed for home.
At approximately 5:15, the lights went out all across Providence. The lack of power created an
urgent problem for the city's two major newspapers, the Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin.
They desperately needed to disseminate information to towns across the state about public safety; where
to go for food, shelter, clothes and emergency health care. And even as the search for bodies went on,
they needed to publish the names of the dead and missing. Working by candlelight and flashlight, the
newspapers gathered every bit of information they had, then sent staff members to Boston and
Woonsocket. The Woonsocket Call published an emergency edition of the Providence Journal on the
next day and continued to publish the Journal until power to its headquarters on Fountain Street was
restored on October 3rd. The Boston Post published nine emergency editions of the Bulletin until
publication was resumed, also on October 3rd.
WPRO, a Providence radio station, lost its transmitting tower. The station manager was able to resume
broadcasting by attaching a power generator to a farm tractor.
It was these random acts of generosity and kindness, the heroic rescues, the human ingenuity and
miracles great and small, that saved many lives that day. Nevertheless, estimates of loss of life in Rhode
Island that day range from 262 to over 400. The higher figure is claimed by R.A. Scotti, author of Sudden
Sea, The Great Hurricane of 1938. Her contention is that many victims cast out to
sea and drowned were floating, in some cases their layers of clothing and heavy waterlogged boots were
actually holding them upright. They could be spotted only by plane, and many of these bodies were never
recovered. Whatever the tragic tally, the deaths in Rhode Island from the hurricane surpassed any other
state affected by the storm.
If the grand Newport mansions of the Vanderbilts and Astors were unscathed, it did not mean that the
hurricane discriminated against the poor and helpless. In Providence the waters poured into the
venerable financial institutions that housed the cash and bonds and stocks and documents of the wealthy.
After the hurricane moneyed East Siders ventured down from their hilltop mansions on College Hill to
check the contents of their safe deposit boxes and hang their stock certificates out to dry. Most of the
banks' cash was watersoaked and women bank tellers were put to work ironing the greenbacks dry. One
irreplaceable document was sadly unsalvageable: the original handwritten parchment charter for Brown
University penned in 1765.
And in a shocking reversal of policy, the venerable all-male Hope Club opened its doors to women on that
fateful day, although some members grumbled that emergency or no, no good would come from admitting
women...
Though College Hill and most of the East Side of Providence were spared the floodwaters, it could
not escape the fury of the winds. There wasn't a street without downed wires and poles and felled trees,
some pulled out of the earth so violently their ancient roots were exposed. Some streets were so choked
with fallen trees and poles and chunks of masonry and wood that they were impassable.
By 7:30 PM, in Providence, the wind died down, the waters receded, and martial law was imposed.
Armed patrols roamed the streets of Providence, and did so for many days afterward.
The worst was over, for Rhode Island. But the hurricane, undeterred, continued its rampage through New
England; through Swansea, Woods Hole, brushing by Boston and clocking in at the Blue Hill Observatory
with an unbelievable wind speed of 186 mph before the equipment blew apart. It trampled Worcester,
Springfield and the Berkshires; destroyed the maple woods of Vermont and scaled the White Mountains
of New Hampshire. It raised the water level of Lake Champlain by two feet. Finally, it reached Quebec,
near Montreal, its winds still at gale force. It had flown from the Carolinas to Canada in a single day.
And then, what? New England went silent and dark, pushed by the tempest back to the age of candlelight
and fire; completely cut off from the outside world. Landmarks were gone, towns were graveyards; homes
that sheltered generations swept away, roads obliterated. Hundreds of boats and equipment were
destroyed, along with the livelihoods of fisher and lobstermen. The rich trove of Rhode Island white
pine, uprooted, and with it, the state's lumber industry. Maps were useless; the coastlines utterly
changed, the land had to be resurveyed and redrawn. Old Rhody was no more.
An Associated Press reporter somberly declared that the hurricane had taken more even life and riches.
''The greens and commons of New England will never be the same,'' his article said. ''Picture postcard
mementos of the oldest part of the United States are gone with the wind and flood. A great part of the
most picturesque America, as old as the Pilgrims, has gone beyond recall or replacement.''
No homes were rebuilt on Napatree Island. But that is not true of the other coastal communities that were
destroyed by the storm; from South County to the towns ringing Narragansett Bay hundreds more homes
stand today than in 1938, directly in harm's way.
It's Not Like It Never Happened Before...
A plaque affixed to the wall of the historic Old Market House in Market Square in downtown
Providence was inscribed with these words:
The wind driven waters around
the walls of this building
rose to the level of this line:
__________________________
Eleven Feet Nine and One Fourth Inches
Above Mean High Water
But this wasn't the high watermark for the Hurricane of '38. The words at the top of the plaque read:
In the Great Gale of
September 23, 1815
The Great Blow of 1815 was eerily similar to the Hurricane of '38. Sadly there was no one alive in 1938
who could remember it, much less warn the citizens of Rhode Island. Both storms were born near the
Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa. Both made first landfall within ten miles of each other at the
south shore of Long Island. For their time, each set records for wind speed and storm surges. On
September 23rd, 1815, the winds were estimated at 135 mph and higher. The storm surge was eleven
feet. The Gale of 1815 destroyed 500 houses and 35 ships, flooding Providence with historic high water.
But, wait! 1815 wasn't the first time in recorded history that a monster hurricane had hit New
England. That event occurred in 1635, when a catastrophic storm known today as the Great
Colonial Hurricane smashed into New England. This was a deadly Category 4 hurricane with winds in
excess of 140 mph. In Narragansett Bay the tide was 14 feet above normal tide and drowned Native
people and colonists alike. To the Pilgrims, who knew only the temperate peaceful shores of England,
it was apocalyptic.
Anatomy of the 1938 New England Hurricane
In the Northern Hemisphere, the circular motion of a tropical storm is counter clockwise. The left hand
side of the circle is mostly rain. The right hand side is death and destruction on a grand scale:
the "dangerous semi-circle." In a typical Atlantic hurricane scenario, the mid Atlantic coastal states absorb
a left-hand slap of rain and wind. But if the hurricane pushes further north, where Long Island and New
England jut out into the sea, it is the terrible right shoulder of the storm, with its devastating winds
and accompanying storm surges, that slams into the coastal beaches and barrier islands; flattens them in
a matter of minutes; and then if it can find an opening, blasts into the inland bays and rivers to devastate
the heartlands.
Most of the major hurricanes to strike the North Atlantic states originate off the west coast of Africa, near
the Cape Verde Islands. For you amateur meteorologists, pay close attention to any named hurricane that
passes to the north of Puerto Rico and the east of the Bahamas. Even in the late 1930's, on the eve of
World War Two, meteorologists had benefit of neither satellite, radar or offshore buoys; and depended
on reports from ships at sea to pinpoint the locations of major storms. Unfortunately the track of this
deadly storm was not near any shipping lanes. So reports were sketchy and generally ignored. However it
was determined that at 8:30 AM on September 18th, the hurricane of '38 was due north of Puerto Rico
and due east of the Bahama Islands. Dead ahead of the storm lay endless open miles of warm ocean and
humid air for it to feed on.
Usually hurricanes on this path do not cause undue alarm. That is because most of them, as a result
of the westward flow of air masses off the continent, and northward pull of the pole, turn eastward and
dissipate at sea.
But not this time.
This time, there was a high pressure area over the continent, and another high pressure area in the
Atlantic to the west of the storm. The incipient hurricane galloped up the low pressure valley between
the high pressure fronts like a cowboy in a canyon. Instead of flattening and breaking up and curving
eastward out to sea; it compacted, and intensified in its low pressure trough. Its circular winds increased
and its forward momentum accelerated to unheard-of speeds. It was locked into its northward course and
headed straight for New England.
The hurricane of 1938 set a new storm surge record in the city of Providence: 14 feet above mean water
tide, and in some places, as high as 17 feet.
Is There a Lesson in Here Somewhere?
Thankfully, somewhere along the line, between 1635 and 1958, somebody got sick and tired of hurricane
storm surges drowning Rhode Island's capital city over and over. So in 1958, after Hurricane Carol hit
Rhode Island and flooded Providence yet again, the idea was floated to build a hurricane barrier
between Narragansett Bay and the Providence River.
The Fox Point Hurricane Barrier took five years to build (1960 to 1966) and cost $16 million in 1960's
dollars. The engineers who designed it, the contractors who built it, were all local. The Hurricane Barrier
has five 4500 H.P. pumps with instantaneous starting power. These pumps are among the largest in the
world, and each pump is 54.7 feet high and 20 feet in diameter. The five pumps have a capacity of
3,150,000 gallons per minute.
The structure receives power from the Narraganset Electric Company through underground cables.The
city of Providence provides a staff from the Department of Public Works - Engineering Division for the
operation of the barrier; secondary maintenance is also provided by D.P.W. crews. The U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, New England Branch, provides assistance throughout the year, as well as mandatory semi-
annual inspections.
The good news: The Hurricane Barrier provides protection during any weather conditions which would
cause flooding in the Downtown area.
It protects several hundred million dollars of Downtown property in a 280 acre area.
When its river and road gates are closed form a half mile 25 foot high barrier from Allens Avenue to India
Point Park.
The Hurricane Barrier can protect against storms that produce water 20 feet above sea level,
it proved its worth in September, 1985 when hurricane 'Gloria' struck this area. Without the barrier in
place, downtown Providence would have been under at least two feet of water.
The bad news: The Fox Point Hurricane Barrier has no backup power.
An awkward question: what happens to the people and the homes behind the Hurricane
Barrier, along Narragansett Bay?
But here's more Good News...
Rhode Island Hospital is among the few medical centers in the United States that has an on-
site power plant. That facility has two generators that can produce two-thirds of the
electricity the hospital needs on a daily basis. Those generators can run on either diesel fuel
or natural gas, which is piped in underground from New England Gas. The hospital buys the
remainder of its electricity from National Grid; it arrives by underground power lines.In
addition, the hospital has two backup diesel-fired generators. All four generators can
produce as much electricity as the hospital needs for up to two or three days, and perhaps
longer, depending on the number of patients at the hospital.
"Get Hurricane Ready Rhode Island!"
Gov. Don Carcieri recently introduced a public service campaign to help Rhode Island residents prepare
for hurricanes, warning Rhode Islanders that they shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security
because it has been 70 years since it was hit last by a major storm.
"We have to be careful not to be complacent," Carcieri said. "There's only so much a state can do. At the
end of the day families have to take responsibility."
The campaign, developed by the National Hurricane Center and Federal Alliance for Safe Homes,
includes a 42-page guidebook, a Web site and a hot line offering tips on limiting damage to homes,
evacuating safely and dealing with power outages.
And Steve Kass, public information officer for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, says
they have not been waiting for the anniversary of the '38 hurricane to get ready. Ever since Hurricane
Katrina, they have taken a close look at Rhode Island's hurricane preparedness and how to avoid the
catastrophic failure of leadership and rescue efforts especially in New Orleans. The RIEMA plans to put
high water mark signs around the state, to remind Rhode Islanders of how catastrophically high the flood
waters did (and can again) rise during a major hurricane. The agency also plans to launch a media
blitz stressing the importance of hurricane awareness and preparedness. On September 13th, in
cooperation with other state and federal agencies, a full scale hurricane exercise is planned. (Sorry,
public not invited.)
All the powers that be make the point that like Boy Scouts, Rhode Islanders must Be Prepared. But what
if a hurricane tears up the Atlantic at speeds as fast or even faster than the storm of 1938? There might
be time to prepare: stockpile food and water, board up windows...but would there be time to get the hell
out of Dodge?
That disaster scenario is what keeps David Vallee awake at night: a New England hurricane's sudden,
rapid and unpredictable acceleration and/or a worse angle of approach than the Hurricane of '38.
David R. Vallee, former hurricane program director for the National Weather Service office in Taunton, is
now its Hydrologist in Charge for the Northeast River Forecast Center. He feels we are ripe for another
record-breaking hurricane. He points to Christobal, the third-named storm of the 2008 hurricane season.
Although it never really ripened into a major storm, Vallee points out that it was sucked into the New
England orientation of the jet stream and made it all the way up to Canada. Vallee says there is a
difference between Gulf hurricanes and New England hurricanes, Gulf hurricanes are slow-moving; New
England storms are much faster, Vallee characterizes them as hybrids; half tropical, half jetstream
propelled, and dangerously affected by polar air flows.
In 1995, after a lull of two decades, hurricane activity in the North Atlantic showed a marked uptick that
continues unabated. The Katrina catastrophe certainly succeeded in terrifying the public. Vallee maintains
he has tremendous confidence that the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier, unlike the levees, will do its job. But
Vallee warns that "we still have a very inexperienced population that has not had to deal with the impact
of a major hurricane." Preparedness is key and meteorological science has made huge technological
advances in forecasting with the aid of satellites and sophisticated software. But predicting the path of a
hurricane and its landfall still comes down to the last 24 hours.
And looking back on the Hurricane of '38: what a difference a day makes...
For disaster junkies, armchair meteorologists and concerned citizens of Rhode Island, check out:
Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti
A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane by Everett S. Allen
The Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency: www.riema.ri.gov
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: www.noaa.gov
National Hurricane Center: www.nhc.noaa.gov
National Weather Service: www.nws.noaa.gov
Federal Emergency Management Agency: www.fema.gov