 Storm Diary
02/06/98
A defining
event in R.I. history
"Rhode Island is literally at a standstill."
-- Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy, Feb. 6, 1978
By BRIAN C.
JONES
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
Twenty years ago today, the most devastating winter storm ever recorded in Rhode
Island buried southeastern New England under as much as 4 feet of snow, stranding
thousands of travelers and killing scores of people.
The 36-hour storm not only paralyzed an entire region for a week, it seared the psyches
of most of those who survived what they later would come to remember simply as "The
Blizzard."
Even today, when frenzied TV reporters trumpet an impending snowfall, Rhode Islanders
compulsively sweep grocery shelves clean of bread and milk, coveted commodities as
Blizzard Week wore on.
The storm has become one of the defining moments of state history, ranking with the
Hurricane of '38 and the banking crisis of 1991. It is unique in that it was both
a natural and a manmade catastrophe.
Just a few hours after the storm began, Feb. 6, 1978, a mammoth traffic jam was formed
by 2,000 vehicles on Providence's interlocking expressways. City streets below were
clogged by 3,000 more cars, trucks and buses. This instant "junk yard"
became the central crisis.
It took the cavalry -- the Army and Air Force arriving from southern bases in huge
military cargo jets, crammed with heavy equipment -- to rescue Rhode Island.
The blizzard turned ordinary citizens into heroes.
Santo Amato, now 79, then the state's civil preparedness director, recalls the rescue
of a woman about to give birth, trapped in her car at Chalkstone Avenue and Frederick
Street in Providence.
Two men with her flagged down two passersby. The four lifted her over their heads
and carried her several blocks through the drifts and driving snow to the old Women
& Infants Hospital, where the baby was born.
The drawn-out aftermath turned some into uncivilized misfits.
A truck driver in East Providence, dissatisfied with the inchworm progress of a snowplow
ahead of him, leaped out of his vehicle and punched the plow driver in the nose,
breaking it.
There was enormous generosity. Factories opened as shelters; restaurants gave away
food; bars became refuges where, as in the TV series Cheers, everyone got to know
everyone else's name.
* * * * * *
The Great Blizzard started innocently, with flurries, about 10 on a Monday morning.
But when the storm turned quickly from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, it should not have
been a surprise.
Thirty hours earlier, the National Weather Service forecasters warned of a big storm;
15 hours before, Everette Medeiros, a federal meteorologist in Rhode Island, talked
of a "near-blizzard."
David R. Vallee, a Weather Service meteorologist, noted recently that Rhode Islanders
had already endured a miserable winter, with ice, snow and rainstorms in rapid succession
in January.
Why did almost everyone ignore the predictions?
One theory is that the slow-moving storm had been expected to arrive at 4 a.m., and
when New Englanders awoke to find no snow, most went about their business as usual.
J. Joseph Garrahy, Rhode Island governor, kept an appointment in Newport that day.
"The thought goes through your mind: `How many times do they forecast snow and
then the storm goes out to sea?' " he said later.
By 1 p.m., the storm had become a wind-driven monster.
Offices in downtown Providence disgorged 150,000 workers. Schools everywhere let
out early. But with snow falling at one inch per hour, then two, it was too late.
"They were fleeing not an advancing storm, but a storm that had already hit,"
wrote Ron Winslow, a Journal-Bulletin reporter now at the Wall Street Journal.
By 2 p.m., the highways were packed with cars. By 4, they were gridlocked.
Garrahy left Newport early in the afternoon. It took him more than two hours to make
what was usually a 55-minute trip to Providence.
"Rhode Island is literally at a standstill," Garrahy said after his ride.
At 5 p.m. he declared a state of emergency.
The storm easily met the Weather Service's definition of a blizzard: at least three
hours of winds of 35 mph, heavy snow, severely reduced visibility, severe cold.
At its peak, snow fell at three inches an hour, winds roared at up to 67 mph. The
temperature dipped to 19 degrees.
The blizzard struck harder to the north -- Woonsocket measured 54 inches. Southern
areas got off relatively easily -- Block Island recorded just 10 inches. Providence,
with 35 inches, suffered the most because of the storm's fast pace and commuters
trying to leave all at once.
About 1,000 motorists spent that first night in their cars.
Amato, the emergency coordinator, says the late Walter E. Stone, then superintendent
of the R.I. State Police, sent troopers to check every car on the expressways. National
Guard patrols rescued nearly 3,000 people from their cars.
Throughout the state, 9,150 people found refuge in 66 shelters, some for several
days. Thousands lost electric power. Heating oil deliveries stopped. So did the U.S.
mail.
National Guard helicopters delivered doctors to patients and patients to hospitals.
A volunteer squad of 20 snowmobiles took life-saving medicines to shut-ins.
The blizzard had its sour notes, too. There was price gouging. At least 25 people
were arrested for looting.
The storm's ugliest legacy, often forgotten in the glow of light-hearted survival
tales, was its death toll: 21 in Rhode Island, 73 in Massachusetts.
One Providence victim was discovered alone in his snow-covered car. Several perished
mysteriously, like an East Providence man found in his neighbor's driveway. Some
suffered heart attacks shoveling snow.
Among the cruelest tragedies was that which befell 10-year-old Peter Gosselin. The
boy was last seen playing in huge snow banks near his home on Mary Jane Drive, Uxbridge,
Mass., about noontime on the storm's second day.
Three thousand people searched for him for the next three weeks. On Feb. 27, a postman
saw a mitten protruding from a snow mound a few feet from the boy's front door. He
pulled on the mitten and discovered Peter's body.
* * * * * *
The Journal-Bulletin published every day, but its delivery trucks couldn't get out
for the first two, so workers hauled bundles by hand, snowmobile, four-wheel vehicles
and train.
Radio stations put callers on the air to give personal messages.
Channel 10, the first Providence TV station with a "live" truck that allowed
it to broadcast away from the studio, set up shop at the State House.
With frequent reports from the Capitol, Channel 10's Jack Kavanagh became the Blizzard's
narrator, and the station's meteorologist, John Ghiorse, its interpreter.
"The Blizzard was the storm which actually made weather a news story,"
says Ghiorse, now with Channel 6.
Governor Garrahy, wearing what became a famous red-and-green plaid shirt, activated
the state's emergency radio and TV broadcast system, and appeared constantly on TV,
giving recovery updates.
Beyond being a reassuring image on TV, Garrahy played a pivotal role, getting a chance
for hands-on leadership few state officials ever get.
Garrahy's priority was to reopen T.F. Green Airport, so that military jets could
land 478 troops and 178 pieces of equipment. Then he and federal officials hired
100 heavy plows and trucks from contractors in Buffalo, N.Y.
Efforts focused next on freeing the interstates, moving cars into the center lanes
so outer and inner lanes could be plowed.
Southern Rhode Island recovered within several days. Then the suburbs came to life.
Finally, the capital city was opened. Free RIPTA buses brought workers back downtown
Feb. 13. Nearly the full work force was there the next day.
A statistical postscript to the worst winter storm ever recorded in Rhode Island:
The most intense 24-hour snowfall, 27.6 inches measured at Green Airport, was a record.
(The storm total was 28.6.) But 1978 was not the snowiest winter ever. That mark
was set in 1996, with 106 inches.
In fact, the whole February 1978 was sunny and drier than normal. The exception was
the month's only measurable snowfall -- on Feb. 6 and 7.
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