The 1938 Hurricane

The 1938 hurricane produced winds of unimaginable fury across eastern Long Island, eastern Connecticut, and southern Rhode Island.

The power of the wind carried away roofs, church steeples, factory buildings, and thousands of smaller structures.

On Long Island, several 300-foot steel and concrete-bolted RCA radio towers were twisted into unrecognizable shapes by the wind.

In Stonington, Connecticut, the entire top floor of the three-story, 500,000 square-foot brick Schneider factory blew away.

Many who experienced the 38 storm along the immediate coastline, reported the sound of the wind reached an incredible high pitch - almost a scream. The air became intensely humid.

The sight and sounds of the storm even inspired a book - A Wind To Shake The World, by Everett S. Allen.

The extreme storm surge of the 1938 hurricane was beyond anything coastal residents in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had ever experienced or written about.

There was no historical comparison.

Several survivors along the coast of Rhode Island, stated that at the height of the hurricane, they saw a 40-foot fog bank rolling toward the beach, when the bank got closer, they realized it wasn't fog - it was water (Whipple - 1940).

The combation of a 16 to 20-foot tidal surge and wind gusts that may have reached 150-mph - leveled 1 out of every 3 buildings along the coast of eastern Long Island, southeast Connecticut and southern Rhode Island.

Along the open-ocean facing coastal roads in Rhode Island and Long Island - the damage was horrific.

Whole beach communities were swept away - some without a trace.

Napatree Point, Rhode Island - before and after the Hurricane of 38. The 38 storm was a textbook example of what a severe tropical cyclone can do to a barrier island in a few hours. Two short docks are visible in the center of both photographs. (Photos Lewis R. Greene 1938).

At 3:50 P.M. on Napatree Point in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, the storm surge struck the two-mile long barrier island with full fury.

Forty-four summer homes, the yacht club building, along with seventeen people were swept into the Atlantic and never seen again.

In Westerly, the four mile long Misquamicut Beach was totally wiped clean of buildings - more than 500 beach homes were swept away.

At least 100 people were killed in the Westerly area alone. Hundreds of people - including whole families, clung to rooftops and floating debris, as they rode the wreckage across the bay to the mainland.

In Charlestown, Green Hill, Matunuck, Jerusalem, Galilee, the story was the same - many were dead or missing.

The 38 hurricane also sent a tidal surge of epic proportions funneling up Narragansett Bay.

The bay shore towns of East Greenwich, Barrington, and Warwick suffered catastrophic damage.

Whole rows of buildings collapsed into the raging surf. On Conanicut Island in the middle of Narraganset Bay, a school bus full of grade school children was swept off a narrow causeway and into the raging storm surge, killing seven of ten children.

Providence, Rhode Island experienced one of the worst urban hurricane storm surges ever know on the US mainland.

A tidal-wave like surge flooded downtown Providence with 14-feet of water - submerging hundreds of cars, trolleys, and buildings. 

Hundreds of terrified people were marooned on the upper floors of office buildings in downtown Providence.

The one-hundred seventeen year old, 71-foot steel reinforced lighthouse tower on Whale Rock, could not even stand against the 38 hurricane - it was swept away, taking the 74-year old lighthouse keeper to his death.

As the 1938 hurricane engulfed Rhode Island all sense of normalcy and order were lost. The best and worst of human nature came out.

As writer David Cornel De Jong looked out his third floor office at civilization slowly unraveling in downtown Providence he wrote:

"They came, neck deep, or swimming, 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 seemed organized, almost regimented, as if they'd daily drilled and prepared for this event, the like of which hadn't happened in a hundred and twenty years. They were brazen and insatiable; they swarmed like rats; they took everything. When a few policeman came past in a rowboat, they didn't stop their looting. They knew they outnumbered the police. "