page_title: 1938 New England hurricane
section_title: Rhode Island
hierarchical_section_title: 1938 New England hurricane / Impact / Rhode Island
caption_attribution_description: English: Hurricane water levels are marked at Old Market House Providence
context_page_description: The 1938 New England Hurricane was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The storm formed near the coast of Africa on September 9, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale, before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Long Island on September 21. It is estimated that the hurricane killed 682 people, damaged or destroyed more than 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at $306 million. Damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas as late as 1951. It remains the most powerful and deadliest hurricane in recorded New England history, perhaps eclipsed in landfall intensity only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635.
  At the time, roughly half of the 1938 New England hurricane's existence went unnoticed.
context_section_description: Block Island was comparatively unaffected by waves, with two fishermen killed, one by drowning, but it was greatly affected by wind, with most barns and farm outbuildings destroyed. The storm surge hit Westerly, Rhode Island at 3:50 pm, resulting in 100 deaths. The tide was higher than usual because of the autumnal equinox and full moon, and the hurricane produced storm tides of 14 to 18 feet (5 m) along most of the Connecticut coast, with 18 to 25-foot (8 m) tides from New London, Connecticut east to  Cape Cod—including the entire coastline of Rhode Island.
  The storm surge was especially violent along the Rhode Island shore, sweeping hundreds of summer cottages out to sea. As the surge drove northward through Narragansett Bay, it was restricted by the Bay's funnel shape and rose to 15.8 ft (4.8 m) above normal spring tides, resulting in more than 13 feet (4.0 m) of water in some areas of downtown Providence.  Several motorists were drowned in their automobiles. In Jamestown, seven children were killed when their school bus was blown into Mackerel Cove. Mobs looted stores in downtown Providence, often before the flood waters had fully subsided and due in part to the economic difficulties of the Great Depression.
  Many homes and structures were destroyed along the coast, as well as many structures inland along the hurricane's path, and entire beach communities were obliterated on the coast. Napatree Point was completely swept away, a small cape that housed nearly 40 families between the Atlantic Ocean and Little Narragansett Bay just off of Watch Hill. Napatree is now a wildlife refuge with no human inhabitants. Concrete staircases and boardwalk bases destroyed by the hurricane can still be found when sand levels are low on some beaches. The boardwalk along Easton's Beach in Newport was completely destroyed by the storm.
  A few miles from Conanicut Island, Whale Rock Light was swept off its base and into the waves, killing lighthouse keeper Walter Eberle. His body was never found. The Prudence Island Light suffered a direct blow from the storm surge, which measured 17 feet 5 inches (5.31 m) at Sandy Point. The masonry tower was slightly damaged, but the adjoining light keeper's home was utterly destroyed and washed out to sea. The light keeper's wife and son were both killed, as well as the former light keeper and a couple who left their summer cottages near the lighthouse and sought shelter in what they thought was the sturdier light keeper's home. Light keeper George T. Gustavus was thrown free from the wreckage of the house and was saved by an island resident who held a branch into the water from the cliffs farther down the coast. Gustavus and Milton Chase, the owner of the island's power plant, reactivated the light during the storm by running a cable from the plant to the light and installing a light bulb, marking the first time that it was illuminated with electricity.
  The original parchment of the 1764 Charter of Brown University was washed clean of its text when its vault was flooded in a Providence bank. Newport recorded the highest water level of the storm at 11.5 feet (4 m) above mean sea level, according to a NOAA study.  This storm level is 3 feet (1 m) above the SLOSH model of a 100-year storm, and one estimate is that this water level "reflects a storm occurring roughly once every 400 years."  A study of sand deposits also gives evidence that this was the strongest hurricane to hit Rhode Island in over 300 years. The Fox Point Hurricane Barrier was completed in 1966 because of the massive flooding from the 1938 storm, and from the even higher 14.4 foot (4.4 meters) storm surge that resulted from 1954's Hurricane Carol, in hopes of preventing extreme storm surges from ever again flooding downtown Providence.
caption: Water levels of the 1815 and 1938 hurricanes are marked at Old Market House, Providence
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