While the Hurricane of 1938 swept away houses and flooded Providence, its severity was less intense than the storm that wrecked havoc along the Gulf Coast.

03:50 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 21, 2005

BY PETER B. LORD
Journal Environment Writer

Hope Carpenter was a newlywed living above the family store overlooking the beach in Matunuck in 1938. Like nearly everyone else that sunny morning 67 years ago today, she had no idea a terrible storm was approaching.

Multimedia

While the south coast of Rhode Island took the brunt of the Sept. 21, 1938, hurricane, its force was felt as far as Providence, where the storm destroyed Washington Park Yacht Club, above, and flooded city streets.

Multimedia: Look back at the destruction wrought by the Hurricane of ’38 in the Ocean State, via Journal archival photos, narrated by Journal managing editor for visuals Michael Delaney

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Summer was over and most of the tents and cabins at the family's Roy Carpenter beach colony were empty. Mrs. Carpenter drove to Cranston to visit her mother. Later in the day the two rode out what seemed like a very bad rainstorm. Then at 10 p.m. the back door swung open.

"It was my husband. He looked very distraught. I said what are you doing out on a night like this? He said, 'Hope, there is nothing left at the beach.' "

Hope Carpenter remembers the day the hurricane struck as vividly, she says, as the death of a relative.

Her husband and a few others lashed themselves together with electric cables and crawled away from the shore on their hands and knees to avoid blowing debris.

With memories of Rhode Island's worst hurricane in modern times fresh in her mind, Mrs. Carpenter has been closely following news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and she says she finds it "heartbreaking."

"I look at the children," she says. "It's so devastating. Down at our beach, the houses were seasonal. Just summer homes. Not people's permanent homes."

As devastating at the Hurricane of 1938 was, by most every measure it falls short of Katrina.

The '38 hurricane is considered the most devastating storm to strike New England.

The National Hurricane Center says Katrina will "likely be recorded as the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States."

(But not necessarily the most lethal. In 1900, a hurricane wiped out Galveston, Texas, killing an estimated 8,000 people.)

The '38 hurricane killed nearly 700 people around New England, including more than 300 people in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts.

The death toll for Katrina is creeping toward 1,000 and officials think more bodies will be found.

Journal file photo

Outside City Hall and the Biltmore Hotel, the streets of Providence are left flooded by a massive storm surge in the Hurricane of 1938.

The '38 hurricane was equivalent to a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 121 miles an hour.

Katrina was approaching Category 5, with wind speeds peaking at 175 mph as it approached land.

The storm surge from the '38 hurricane rose 12 to 16 feet above sea level. It was made worse because the storm was moving so fast and it arrived at the same time as the autumnal high tide.

Katrina's storm surge ranged from 20 to 30 feet above sea level and flooded vast areas of Mississippi and Louisana.

The '38 hurricane destroyed more than 2,000 houses. It wiped 44 cottages off Westerly's Napatree Point and swept clean Warwick's Conimicut Point, Island Park in Portsmouth, Jerusalem, Galilee and Misquamicut.

Katrina's impact on housing still needs to be determined, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has already inspected 54,800 damaged houses.

The '38 hurricane did an estimated $300 million in damage.

Some estimates predict the bill for Katrina will exceed $200 billion.

In 1938, Providence flooded with up to 14 feet of water, submerging hundreds of cars and buildings.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans in 20 feet of water.

Another big difference between the two storms is the difference in warnings.

The Hurricane of 1938 was reported by a vessel at sea eight days before it made landfall. It was a powerful storm, Category 5, but then weather observers lost track of it.

Moving west northwestward north of Puerto Rico, it approached Cape Hatteras, N.C., on Sept. 21.

At that point, it accelerated rapidly and sped north at 60 to 70 mph. It hit New England late in the afternoon.

After the storm, there were widespread complaints about inadequate forecasting by the National Weather Service. The complaints led to an overhaul of the service.

Katrina was precisely forecast by a more modern weather service, using models and radar and monitoring devices. Most complaints now are focused on inadequate government preparations for the storm and inadequate response after it happened.

When Hope Carpenter thinks about future Rhode Island storms, she says she fears any hurricane damage will be worse because the coastline is much more developed.

The 350 cabins in Roy Carpenter's look old fashioned, but Mrs. Carpenter says they're intertwined with electric wires and cables.

"It would be quite a mess if we have one now," she said. Nearby neighborhoods have been converted from rustic cabins to expensive, year-round houses.

Journal file photo

A pedestrian struggles through downtown Providence during the Hurricane of '38 as water surges through the streets.

To say a bad hurricane now will be more destructive than the '38 hurricane is not to diminish what happened 67 years ago.

Rhode Island native R.A. Scotti, who in 2003 wrote Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938, said in one published interview that she was amazed at the accuracy of survivors' memories.

"The hurricane of 1938 was a storm of such extreme power and fury that the memory of it is permanently etched on the minds and in the hearts of those who endured it," she said. "When I began to interview survivors for my book and heard their amazing stories, I was skeptical. I assumed that like the minnow that grows into a great white shark in a favorite fish tale, memories of the hurricane had become overblown with the years. But as I researched the storm, I realized that the memories were as accurate as they were vivid. The hurricane of 1938 was so extreme, it is almost impossible to exaggerate its impact."

David R. Vallee, hurricane program director for the National Weather Service office in Taunton, said he's marking the anniversary today by giving a presentation to a group of insurance underwriters. He calls his slide show, "The Realities of New England Hurricanes," and he stresses that it is not fiction.

Vallee said he would not attempt to compare the '38 hurricane with Katrina. They were very dissimilar.

But, he says, "I look at Katrina and I say: Can we be without water and power for three weeks? Can we be without means to transport ourselves for weeks? Can we have natural gas shortages? Can we have houses pulled off their foundations?

"The answer is yes!"

TAKE A MULTIMEDIA LOOK BACK at the destruction wrought by the Hurricane of '38 in the Ocean State, via Journal archival photos, narrated by Journal managing editor for visuals Michael Delaney, and share your own hurricane stories at:

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