Recounting the Hurricane of 1938: local memories of a regional disaster

The Hurricane of 1938 was one of those defining moments that divide time into parts that either precede or follow. It was transformative, impacting human lives and settlements as well as natural systems, coastal and inland, aquatic and terrestrial, with a force unsurpassed in the region’s living memory. Seventy years have now passed since that hurricane made its historic landfall on the afternoon of September 21, 1938. Humans have regrouped and rebuilt and nature has regenerated and reclaimed, but the memories of those who lived through the Hurricane of ‘38 remain