Never saw it coming; When `the big one' went north in a hurry.

Byline: Bill Fortier

After four days that brought nearly a foot of rain to Central Massachusetts, the sun came out for just a few minutes in the early afternoon 70 years ago today.

That proved to be a cruel tease because by mid-afternoon on that Wednesday, the driving tropical rain started again and the wind picked up from the southeast. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was about to hit the area, with winds estimated at 80 miles per hour to 100 mph and more than 6 inches of rain.

It all lasted about three hours - roughly 4 to 7 p.m. Children walking from school had to dodge falling trees, shingles, and in some cases, parts of roofs.

Three schools in Worcester collapsed, according to newspaper reports, and six churches in the city lost their steeples. Steeples also toppled in other communities in Worcester County. Initial reports said Worcester had lost 4,000 trees in the tempest. Seventeen people were killed in Worcester County and 166 were injured. Damage totaled about $5 million in the city alone, and Mayor William A. Bennett declared a state of emergency later in the evening as the storm moved through northern New England, where it was reported that 1 billion trees had been knocked over.

Communities throughout Worcester County had serious flooding. Newspaper reports said Main Street in Athol was under several feet of fast-moving water and Fitchburg and Southbridge were among other communities dealing with flooding and damage from the high winds. Nearly 100 cottages were blown into Webster Lake.

The storm - known ever since as the Long Island Express - moved from off the coast of North Carolina to Connecticut by way of Long Island in eight hours. Worcester County was on the windy, east side of the storm, whose eye cut west over the Connecticut Valley on its way to Vermont and eventually Quebec.

The storm was much worse elsewhere.

Hurricane-produced storm surges of 14 feet to 18 feet inundated most of the coast of Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut, an area filled at the time with homes. The storm struck that area in the early afternoon at high tide, and the pounding surf and tidal surge that registered on seismographs in New York City rushed nearly a mile inland. Downtown Providence, which recorded wind gusts as high as 125 mph, was submerged under a storm surge nearly 20 feet high.

When the mayhem ended and the sun came out as it always does the day after a hurricane, the cost was tallied up: more than 600 dead in New England and Long Island, 2,000 injured, an estimated $400 million in damage and 18,731 homes destroyed or heavily damaged.

Karen Clark, president and chief executive officer of Boston-based Karen Clark & Co., which helps insurance agencies and other businesses manage and mitigate catastrophe risk, said if a similar storm were to happen today, damage could reach $50 billion.

Ms. Clark, who spoke in July at the Northeast Hurricane Mitigation forum in Newport, R.I., where the 1938 hurricane was discussed in detail, said even though Worcester County is inland it can get high winds, as that storm proved.

"That was an exceptional storm," she said.

If such a storm were to happen today, technology that didn't exist 70 years ago would give residents at least some warning - although public safety officials caution there is only so much that can be done to get ready for a Category 3 hurricane moving north from the Atlantic Ocean at 70 mph with 120 mph winds.

Speakers at the Newport conference said the unnamed 1938 hurricane was near the upper limit of how strong a hurricane can be this far north. They said if it happened once, it can happen again.

Hurricanes such as Ike, that recently blasted the Texas coast, are expected in that part of the country, said Joseph Bastardi, hurricane specialist and senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com. A storm like the 1938 hurricane that caused 186 mph wind gusts at Blue Hill Observatory in Milton and storm tides 20 feet high is not to be expected here.

"I think the 1938 hurricane is the freakiest tropical system to ever hit this country," he said.

People in Central Massachusetts on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1938, had no idea what was about to hit them.

That morning's newspaper had a story about a tropical system off the North Carolina coast that forecasters said was going to go out to sea south of Nantucket, just like they all did.

Meteorologists back then drew their weather maps by hand and relied primarily on ship reports to locate storms. There were no weather buoys, satellite views were still almost 30 years into the future and radar, used for one of the first times in tracking the 1953 Worcester tornado, was something that scientists and the military just talked about. There was no Weather Channel 70 years ago.

So, senior forecasters at the then Weather Bureau overruled the suggestion by a junior forecaster named Charles Pierce, who predicted the storm would hit New England. Senior forecasters believed the storm would bother only marine life on its way into the North Atlantic.

The senior forecasters were wrong.

John Kelly, 80, owner and principal of Career Pro Inc., of King of Prussia, Pa., said that when he left St. Paul Grammar School in Worcester that day for his three-mile walk home to 46 Townsend St., the wind really started to blow. Among the scenes he saw was the collapse of the old Classical High School.

"I stood transfixed as tons of mortar, bricks, glass and steel cascaded down on the adjoining street and sidewalk," Mr. Kelly wrote in a published article on the great storm.

"I walked up Pleasant Street with the wind howling about me and rain spattering on the sidewalk," he wrote in the article.

Mr. Kelly escaped the school collapse uninjured and continued walking home.

"I passed stores whose windows had been blown out. Before reaching Russell Street, I saw glass windows explode and the glass fly into the air.

"I looked up Townsend Street and saw dozens of huge trees uprooted, lying across the streets and sidewalks. Trees that were still standing swayed perilously in the wind and the rain. Branches snapped off trees. Partially uprooted trees continued to rock ominously back and forth. Trees had fallen on cars and houses. What was happening? I walked up Townsend Street to my home gazing in consternation at the chaos all around me."

All in all, not your ordinary walk home from school as retired Webster Fire Chief Clive Papineau, 83, of Webster, can attest.

"It was really windy," Mr. Papineau said, in recalling his approximately mile-long walk home from school.

"I remember seeing some chimneys blow off, a few roofs. I didn't know what to think."

Telegram & Gazette columnist and lifelong Webster resident Ed Patenaude, 80, remembers his grandmother telling his grandfather, mesmerized by the violence of the storm, to move away from a picture window.

"My grandmother walked around the house spraying holy water," Mr. Patenaude said. "But, then again, she did that with every storm."

Later that day, the Patenaudes joined other town residents at LaPalm hardware store on Main Street in Webster, where people got saws to start cleaning up the damage.

Both Mr. Patenaude and Mr. Kelly, who in a telephone interview said he saw about 10 to 15 trees blow down on his walk home from school, said they found the storm - that nobody knew until the next day was a hurricane - exciting.

"For some inexplicable reason I wasn't scared," Mr. Kelly said in the article. "It was raining and there were violent wind gusts, but I was more curious than frightened."

Cliff Granger, 93, lives on Prospect Street in Auburn, an area that was mostly fields and trees in 1938.

Sitting on a porch on the side of his house looking south, he pointed to a row of pine trees.

"They're all 70 years old; the ones that were there before got blown down by the hurricane," he said.

Mr. Granger lived on Route 12 in Auburn near where the Hyundai dealership is now located. Noting that the area is the highest spot on Route 12 between Worcester and Webster, Mr. Granger said he didn't see any flooding. They did experience a lot of wind, however.

He and his brother, Homer, repaired several roofs in the area, including the one on their parents' house that got sheared off during the storm.

"It was the windiest day I've ever seen, oh sure," said Mr. Granger.

Mr. Granger was visiting his girlfriend at nearby Sibley's Tea House when he noticed the wind just kept getting stronger.

"We were wondering what was going on, it kept getting worse and worse," he recalled.

The Granger family farmed for a living and to them it was just a really bad storm.

"We were used to taking care of ourselves," Mr. Granger said. "If the power went out, so what."

Thursday brought word that many roofs had been ripped off homes in town and hundreds of trees had been blown down. News also came of major flooding in Southbridge and Sturbridge.

"It wasn't until we saw the newspaper that we found out it was a hurricane," he said.

And it was a major hurricane that those who lived through said came without any warning.

"There was no inclination whatsoever that it was going to happen," Mr. Granger said.

Contact Bill Fortier by e-mail at [e-mail].

ART: PHOTOS; MAP

CUTLINE: (1) Cliff Granger, 93, of Auburn was visiting his girlfriend at nearby Sibley's Tea House when the wind heralding the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 got worse and worse. (2) The three-story Sweeney Block at South and Pulaski streets in Ware had collapsed into the swirling waters of the Ware River when this picture was taken in 1938 by Evening Gazette photographer George P. Cocaine. The dramatic photo captured first place in an Associated Press contest. (3) Onlookers view the clock and other debris from the destroyed First Unitarian Church in Worcester after the 1938 hurricane. (4) Flood waters from the 1938 hurricane spill over from Main Street in Milford into what was once a garden. (5) Children made homeless by the 1938 hurricane receive soup from Mrs. Katherine Sawtelle at a relief station set up in Winchendon. (6) Retired Webster Fire Chief Clive Papineau, 83, of Webster was 13 and walking home from school when the hurricane swept through town. (7) John Kelly, 80, who was walking home from St. Paul Grammar School in Worcester that day, watched the collapse of the old Classical High School. "I stood transfixed as tons of mortar, bricks, glass and steel cascaded down on the adjoining street and sidewalk," Mr. Kelly wrote in a published article on the great storm. (8) An automobile makes its way through the flooded area at Mechanic and East Main streets in Southbridge. (MAP) 1938 Hurrican track

PHOTOG: (1) T&G Staff/RICK CINCLAIR (2, 4, 5, 8) T&G File Photos (3, 7) Submitted photo (6) T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS (MAP) T&G Staff/VILAYPEHT KRUOCH