Remembering Hurricane Carol, 1954
By William F. Hanna
The U.S. National Weather Bureau began naming Atlantic hurricanes after women in 1954, and that is how, seventy years ago this summer, New Englanders were introduced to Hurricane Carol. As hurricanes go, her life cycle was brief, but the storm wreaked enough havoc along the Atlantic coast to convince the Weather Bureau to retire her name forever. She is remembered as the one and only Carol.
Hurricane Carol began as a tropical depression in the Bahamas on August 25, 1954 and increased in strength as it moved north across the warm Atlantic waters. The storm gained hurricane status on the 27th while positioned east of Florida, and after weakening a bit, accelerated as it turned northwestward, well off Georgia’s coast. By afternoon on August 30, Carol was a dangerous Category 2 hurricane moving parallel to the Mid-Atlantic states. By 6 a.m. on the 31st, the storm was 100 miles east/southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and on a course to carry it across Long Island, New York.
Carol had announced her advance toward Taunton in the late evening of August 30, 1954, when rain began falling throughout the area. Coincidentally, the storm approached just as movie-goers were leaving the Strand Theater, where a reprise of the 1939 classic film Gone with the Wind had attracted a large crowd. Rain continued throughout the night and by early morning high winds were buffeting the region.
Unlike the infamous Hurricane of 1938, residents of southeastern Massachusetts were not taken completely by surprise by this storm. That certainly saved lives, but hurricane warning methods in 1954 were primitive compared with today’s. Not only were there no weather forecasting satellites at that time, but this was also an age before FM radio and cable television were available to Tauntonians. They had access to only three regional television stations, and outdated local newspaper coverage of the storm’s advance was of little use. Area news, including storm warnings, was delivered mainly by radio stations. In Taunton, that duty fell to the local station, WPEP, while Boston’s WBZ was most popular for regional and national news. Even so, since this was a time before most Americans owned transistor radios, the news arrived only as long as electricity remained available.
The Taunton area endured the worst of the storm on the morning of August 31. Hurricane-force winds battered southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut as more than two inches of rain fell in horizontal sheets. In Taunton, the damage was widespread. Morton Hospital reported that a dozen windows had been shattered by the wind, and six large trees on hospital property had been felled. One of these had crushed a doctor’s car. Along Main Street, several large plate glass windows were smashed, as was the large front window of the Taunton Daily Gazette building on Cohannet Street. More serious damage occurred elsewhere. At the intersection of Weir Street and Somerset Avenue, for example, the wind blew the roof of the Calvary Methodist Church completely off, leaving severe damage inside. For a time public safety officials feared that the building’s walls would collapse. In East Taunton, airport staff reported several planes were damaged and three destroyed, along with significant damage to two buildings.
Throughout the morning Hurricane Carol’s winds brought down scores of trees across the area, and this damage crippled transportation and communication. Downed limbs blocked passage on Routes 44, 138, and 140, and repair crews with chain saws were out throughout the worst of the storm. The Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway Company suspended bus service at 11:30 a.m. because several of its busiest routes were impassable. Fallen trees and branches knocked out electricity in three-quarters of Taunton, while loss of power was widespread in Raynham, Berkley, and parts of Lakeville and Middleborough. The Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant, whose crews were set to work around the clock, announced that it might be four days before power could be fully restored.
The hardship brought by downed electric wires was intensified by the loss of telephone service. The New England Telephone Company reported that in the hours just before the hurricane’s arrival, the company’s operators had handled the largest call volume in its history. Thanks to the high winds and downed wires there was no telephone service in Dighton; about 1,500 phones were out in Mansfield, and 1,200 were out in Norton. Rehoboth was all but isolated, with no electricity or telephone service. Officials asked for patience and promised that outside crews were being brought in to help repair the system.
As if high winds and torrential rain weren’t enough, many residents of the Taunton area also had to cope with flood waters. Throughout history the Taunton River, usually docile and well-behaved, has occasionally turned against those who live near its banks. Flood waters inundated parts of Dean Street, and despite the sandbags that had been urgently placed, Hurricane Carol flooded the Weir section of Taunton adjacent to the river, with the water reaching the first floor windows of factories on West Water Street. Just downstream in Berkley, the Taunton River inundated low-lying areas of the town, while the usually friendly Assonet River had much of its namesake central village under water.
Across the river the situation was much more critical in Dighton. Route 138 was impassable at several locations and waterfront rescues had to be carried out in low-lying areas. The town needed Red Cross assistance to relocate fifteen families, totaling 90 people, who were displaced by the storm. Older residents noted that not since the 1938 hurricane had they seen the waterfront fields and barns at the Bristol County Agricultural School immersed in water.
Flooding was also a problem farther downriver, where the Taunton Yacht Club (actually located in Dighton) was heavily damaged. Both the front porch and entire south wall of the building were washed away, and one of the club’s wharves left its mooring and drifted three miles upstream before coming to ground on the Bristol County Agricultural School’s property. The Taunton Daily Gazette reported that boats from the club were widely scattered both up- and downriver, and that it took several days before most could be accounted for.
As Hurricane Carol moved through southeastern Massachusetts during the morning, it both accelerated and weakened. The worst of the storm was over by early afternoon and residents, many without lights or telephones, started to pick up the pieces while attempting to check on friends and family. This was an especially trying time for Tauntonians who owned summer cottages on Cape Cod or along the South Coast. Officials later reported that Carol’s storm surge reached a height of thirteen feet in some coastal areas and this brought widespread devastation to many shore locations.
As soon as the storm passed, the people of southern New England set to work restoring electric and telephone service, clearing the roads of fallen trees and generally cleaning up the huge mess left by Carol. The Weather Service reported that there were sixty-five storm-related deaths, including thirty-one from Massachusetts and seventeen from Rhode Island. Property damage totaled more than $450 million.
As New Englanders settled into the hard work of recovery, they didn’t know that Mother Nature had yet another surprise in store. On September 2, 1954, as Hurricane Carol was dissipating in New Hampshire, a younger sister was born east of the Caribbean Sea. This new storm, called Edna, would appear as the region’s second major hurricane on September 11, less than two weeks after Carol. Like her older sister, Edna did enough harm to convince the Weather Bureau to also retire her name from further use. But that’s another story and perhaps we’ll see more of Carol and Edna in a future blog.
(In the meantime, those readers wanting even more disaster stories must consult this Eric Schultz blog series: “Fire and Ice: Some Calamities of the Old Colony” in Parts I, II, and III.)
