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December 2007                                                                                              Volume 13 - Number 3

Perspectives...

Personal Experience with a Disaster – Hurricane Hazel
By John French

NOAA’s Report: “Hazel was first spotted east of the Windward Islands on October 5, 1954. It moved through the islands later that day as a hurricane, then it moved westward over the southern Caribbean Sea through October 8. A slow turn to the north-northeast occurred from October 9-12, with Hazel crossing western Haiti as a hurricane on the 12th. The hurricane turned northward and crossed the southeastern Bahamas on the 13th, followed by a northwestward turn on the 14th. Hazel turned north and accelerated on October 15, making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane near the North Carolina-South Carolina border. Subsequent rapid motion over the next 12 hours took the storm from the coast across the eastern United States into southeastern Canada as it became extratropical. High winds occurred over large portions of the eastern United States. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina reported a peak wind gust of 106 mph, and winds were estimated at 130 to 150 mph along the coast between Myrtle Beach and Cape Fear, North Carolina. Washington, DC reported 78 mph sustained winds, and peak gusts of over 90 mph occurred as far northward as inland New York State. A storm surge of up to 18 ft inundated portions of the North Carolina coast. Heavy rains of up to 11 inches occurred as far northward as Toronto, Canada resulting in severe flooding. Hazel was responsible for 95 deaths and $281 million in damage in the United States, 100 deaths and $100 million in damage in Canada, and an estimated 400 to 1000 deaths in Haiti.” http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml#hazel
“An extra-tropical cyclone is a storm system that primarily gets its energy from the horizontal temperature contrasts that exist in the atmosphere. Extra-tropical cyclones (also known as mid-latitude or baroclinic storms) are low pressure systems with associated cold fronts, warm fronts, and occluded fronts.”
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/A7.html

    Although NOAA says now that Hazel was extratropical at the time it came through Pennsylvania, in October of 1954 all radio and television announcements said HURRICANE HAZEL and made no distinction about its transformation. When Hurricane Hazel struck, I was seven and a half years old. We rented a small house on 40 acres about an hour northwest of Philadelphia. About 1/3rd of the property was in old growth trees with the rest in fields and lawn. The owner and her daughter lived on the property in a large three story house next door. Our house started out in the nineteenth century as a spring house with a single, two foot thick stonewalled room above ground and an active spring in the basement. When my parents moved in in 1946 with my older sister, there were two rooms on the first floor and two and a bathroom on the second. By 1954, in exchange for low rent, my father had added a living room/dining room to the front and a bed, bath and utility room to the back of the ground floor. We had two coal fired furnaces, a small one we used in the warmer months and a larger one we used in the winter. They were completely human operated – we shoveled in the coal and removed the ashes – no electricity whatsoever. In the kitchen, we used a bottled gas fired stove and oven. At some point, stone and concrete had been added to the original basement to give the spring a flat floor in the middle and trough on three sides – I believe for the earlier farmers to store their milk until it went to market. In the late nineteen fifties, my younger brother and I kept one gallon glass jugs (courtesy of my parents proclivity for sherry) filled with water in the cool spring water as part of our bomb shelter supplies. My father was a plant engineer in Ambler, Pennsylvania where asbestos concrete products were produced and my mother was a part-time horticulturist working on some of the wealthier estates in the area. When Hazel struck, the five of us took flashlights and candles and sheltered in the original above ground stone walled room. At the time, this was our TV room but we did not have the TV on and lost power early in the storm anyway. We played games and read stories and (at least the three kids) had a grand time.  The large trees next to the house and the house itself escaped major damage but the driveway was not so fortunate. It was about a fourth of a mile long and went through the wooded portion of the property. There were no sections of driveway not covered by downed trees and limbs. Thanks to our coal and bottled gas, we had warmth, hot water and hot food. It took about a week before the driveway was reopened and power and phones were restored.