As we enter Hurricane Season in Providence we count ourselves lucky to have seen Hurricane IRENE pass by without causing much more damage other than trees down and power outages. A look back in time to September 21, 1938 and we can begin to understand better what few people remember—the destruction and human suffering that came with the Hurricane on that date.

A glance at the headlines in the Providence Journal of Tuesday September 20, 1938, the day before the tragedy, shows how unprepared Rhode Island was for the approach of the storm that was making its way towards Florida before heading up the East Coast.
“FLORIDA CLEARS DECKS TO FACE HURRICANE WHICH MAY NOT COME, Weather Bureau Reports Severe Storm Sweeping Toward Coast with 75 Mile-an-Hour Winds Has Changed Its Course” –Providence Journal 20 Sept 1938
The next day, September 21, 1938, the front page of the Providence Journal announced what all the readers in the area already knew – nature can be overpowering and human life fragile in the path of a hurricane.
This extra edition of the Providence Journal was printed on the presses of a rival paper, The Woonsocket Call, because of the flooding and power outage in the City of Providence.
To research other monster storms in Rhode Island’s history, The Great Hurricane of 1815, CAROL 31 August 1954 and BOB 19 August 1991, visit the RIHS Library to find newspapers, photographs, books, oral histories and film on your topic. The image below is from a book in the Library’s Print Collection titled The Complete Historical Record of New England’s Stricken Area September 21, 1938 published by The Woonsocket Call (Providence, RI, 1938).
NEXT WEEK the Collections Blog will have details on Hannah Farber’s upcoming talk about Rhode Island’s maritime insurance industry— COMMERCE, THE NATION AND THE ATLANTIC: American Marine Insurers in the Napoleonic Era — at 6:30 pm on 21 Sept 2011 at the RIHS Library, 121 Hope Street., Providence, RI.
— KPC