POST HURRICANE 1987

Memories of the hurricane - I was out in it.

That night I was on duty at the Sealink Freight Office at the harbour. We'd started our shift at 22.00 and it was pretty clear when we arrived that it would be a 'nothing in, nothing out' night, with nothing to do other than prepare and process paperwork for any outbound freight vehicles that happened to arrive. Once that was done, there would be a chance to watch a bit of TV and play a game of Trivial Pursuit, perhaps. (Come on, we all did it back then!)

We were obviously aware of the wind strength, but didn't really think too much of it, as we'd worked through stormy nights before. However, reports of serious damage soon started coming in from the outside dock staff, and at one point we were told that the Tango container crane had been pushed to the end of its tracks and was in danger of collapse. There was talk at that point of the harbour area being evacuated but our boss, having been called in, decided that we were in no danger from the crane and should carry on working. He then went home again!

Not long after that, there was an enormous crash from the freight shed itself and a few brave souls opened the interconnecting door and had a look inside. It turned out that someone, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to close the massive doors at each end of the shed to stop the wind whistling through. The force of the hurricane had simply blown the southern doors down. The northern doors were, I think, pretty swiftly opened to prevent them suffering the same fate. The dock supervisor was back in the office soon afterwards, and told us that parts of the metal freight shed roof were in danger of peeling off. He ordered an immediate evacuation of the office and surrounding area. We needed no second telling and left pronto!

As well as trying to stay upright, I had to pick my way through a lot of fallen debris on the way to my car. Objects were flying in the air just like you see on films of tornados. I then drove back home to Denton. There were no problems on The Drove, but those light columns on the flyover and roundabouts were shaking like twigs. Getting along Avis Road was another matter entirely and I had to drive over the pavements to get round several fallen trees. (It was at that point that you realised that a tree - or anything else - could fall on you at any point!) The same thing was true of Denton Road, littered with debris.

I got back to my home at St Leonards Close not knowing what to expect. The reason for this is that I am a radio ham, and at the time I had a couple of very large antennas mounted above the house. A glance skywards as I ran from the car showed them to be still in place, though they were waving around like Magnus Pyke's arms (remember him, the 'mad' TV professor?). Once indoors there was nothing to do but go to bed. Sleeping was out of the question for my wife and I, as with every creak, groan and bang we fully expected the antennas to come crashing down. In fact, we spent most of the night in the second bedroom with our daughter. She wasn't yet two, and slept blissfully through the whole night!

As we waited for the storm to abate, there was no power so we dug out a battery-operated transistor radio from somewhere to hear the news. It was pretty grim listening. After a while, I ventured out into the garden to survey the damage. I'd lost part of my fence and the shed roof would need re-felting, but other than that, things were OK, Amazingly, the antennas had stayed up. The guy wires that had kept them steady(ish) had stretched and were just flapping around. I had to cut about a foot off each one and then re-tighten all the turnbuckles.

Looking across the valley, I could see that my fellow radio ham John Hills hadn't been so fortunate. His similar set-up had come down. The reason was simple. At their height the winds had been blowing right over Mount Pleasant and St Leonards Close lies in the lee of the hill, so I'd been spared the worst. John's antennas took the full force of the hurricane.

Like many others, I ignored the advice to stay indoors and went out with the camera later in the day. If I can find the photos or slides, I'll post them.

Andy

I had left the military in April of '87 and was one of the local telecom linemen (with Brian Sims), as well as being on the lifeboat crew.

I remember listening to wind howling from my house at the end of South Road (58) and having to tape the letter box shut to stop it rattling. In the morning we were paged to go to the telephone exchange to help start the generators and were then tasked to check that the phone boxes were all working, so people could call in emergencies etc. We then had the task of sorting out the telephone lines that had come down.

First we had priority lines to repair: Doctors, The Coastguard Lookout, that sort of thing, then we were detailed to go to areas that had multiple problems.

I went to the Caravan Park (between Newhaven and Peacehaven). It wasn't there... and houses on the cliffs at Peacehaven had gone from being 2 storeys down to bungalows and it's surprising how many were owned by doctors! Then the Chairman of Telecom promised to have as many lines as possible back by Christmas....so much to do we were even working on Christmas eve morning.

The morning after the huricane, there was no electricity, no water and no gas at my parent's place in Bishopstone. I took a trip down to Newhaven (first removing the roofing tile from the middle of my car bonnet) in search of a cuppa after a conference on CB [community band radio]. I ended up at the Ark (then run by Roger) with Barry J and Paul F and few of the other lads. A repair committee was formed as my parents house had sustained some damage and needed covering up as they were away on holiday.

When I returned home, the shed that had blown into the middle of the lawn had vanished.... it must have been reclaimed by it's owner!

Nice to see you on here, Mark! Community Band Radio??? Er, Citizen's Band, perhaps!

Andy

That night there was a stag party at Newhaven Railway Club. Mick Thorpe and myself stayed late afterwards to help clean up and maybe have a couple of extras.
When we finally decided to walk home to the valley, as we went across the bridge I remember we both kept falling over. Thinking it was because we had one too many extras we carried on. Next morning I woke up at about eleven and could not believe my eyes.