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Hurricanes and Other Disasters
Hurricane Donna - 1960As I grow older (graciously, of course!) I still have memories of hurricanes that threatened St. Thomas when I was a young boy. At that time, there were no weather satellites until the mid-1960s, no "Weather Channel" and, in fact, only limited television weather news -- that coming from a Spanish-language station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Therefore, we relied almot completely on radio news and weather reports to let us know of any approaching storms. I remember, as a boy of 10, going with my father to board up the windows of his auto repair shop in the heart of downtown St. Thomas. Then, it was back home to close the wooden hurricane shutters that hung on the outside of all our home's windows (these wooden shutters were a standard part of island architecture). All we could do after that was listen to the weather reports on the radio and wait for the storm to either hit the islands or swerve off at the last minute -- which they did almost every single time. Hurricane Donna in 1960 was one such storm that was headed directly for St. Thomas but made just enough of a turn to the North to take it away from us. After the storm had passed and the "all clear" was signalled by the local Civil Defense, and with our home safe, my dad went to check on his auto repair shop and then we all went for a drive around the island to survey any damage. The photos below, captured from slides that my dad took 38 years ago, show the rough surf in the St. Thomas harbor and at Morningstar Beach on St. Thomas's south side that resulted from Donna's close pass.
By 1979, I was 5-years married, with a family and a home of my own to worry about. Then came the terrible twins -- David and Frederic. Like Donna, Hurricane David set its sights for St. Thomas, but swerved away at the last minute and passed more than 100 miles to the South on August 31, 1979. But David's twin, Hurricane Frederic didn't swerve away. Instead, this storm passed directly over St. Thomas just 3 days later, on September 3. Luckily for St. Thomas, Frederic had been downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it reached us. However, the storm dumped up to 2 feet of rain on St. Thomas (and Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic) causing major floods and water damage to homes and businesses in lower ground. Little did we know that 10 years later, we would be faced with the worst hurricane disaster in the Virgin Islands since 1928!
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1996-2010 Arnold E.
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