Experiences from the New England hurricane: I — General review of the storm and its effects

With a wind velocity as high as 186 miles per hour, and traveling forward as fast as 65 miles per hour, the hurricane that devastated parts of Long Island and New England on September 21, 1938, was the first storm of its character to afflict this territory in more than a century. The storm originated at least ten days prior to that time in the Caribbean Sea and was expected to strike the city of Miami, Fla., but turned north instead; later, it veered unexpectedly to the west as it progressed northward, gaining in intensity and momentum, and with unpredictable fury swept across a territory where a hurricane of any sort is a rarity. The story of the terrible destruction and loss of life left in its wake already has been told, as has been the story of the tremendous damage to the various public-utility systems and the added suffering resulting from the temporary loss of these services. With a view to determining what if any engineering conclusions might be drawn from the experiences following the hurricane that might be of value in the future, one of the two general sessions of the AIEE 1939 winter convention was devoted to a presentation and discussion of six addresses on this subject. The following six articles embrace the essential substance of those six addresses.