Friday, October 3, 2008

September 22, 1938 Thursday

Arose early to view the storm damage. It is terrible. The majority of Keene’s lovely giant elms are blown down—on to houses, into every street. Railroads are of course impassable. There is no electricity and water power is low. I know of 3 cars being completely demolished by trees falling on them. 2 others were stopped right in the center of the street with telephone poles falling on them. The bowling alley near us had its entire roof blown off and the brick building wrecked down to the first floor. A house above ours was split into by a tree, leaving it inner rooms exposed to the open air. (Of course there is no school and I spend my time looking and helping). Practically every house is hurt in some way and nearly all have at least one tree on them or in their yards. Barns and garages have either floated away or been blown down. To put it briefly, Keene is practically wrecked—although we know of no fatalities. We personally were very lucky. We only had our shingles blown off, a door blown off its hinges, a window blown out and a screen porch downstairs wrenched around. No trees struck our house. The places are being rebuilt as fast as possible. Yesterday, one couldn’t walk 25 feet without striking some impassable debris—trees, telephone poles or wires, ridge poles, roofing, etc. Now it is 50 feet.

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