When the Storm Comes

It was a day like any other when college hopeful William Degnan left his home for an interview at Brown University on September 21, 1938. By the time he left to return home, the winds of change were in the air.

Nicknamed the "Long-Island Express", the Great Hurricane of 1938 struck quickly, with little advance notice besides a darkening sky. The high tide worsened storm surge which along with intense winds caused wreckage throughout the state. In Providence, water levels rapidly leapt to nearly 17 feet high in the business district, sweeping away people and property.

Meteorologists called the Great Hurricane of 1938 a “100-year storm.” That is, the likelihood of such a tempest striking in any given year is only about one percent. But even by 1954, state officials knew that was wishful thinking. That year, Hurricane Carol became the second 100-year storm to strike in a period of only 16 years. The following year, a study by the Rhode Island Development Council in response to the storm revealed increasing awareness of risk in the Ocean State.

Today, hurricanes remain the top natural hazard risk to the waterfront state capital city of Providence, according to the Providence Resilience Partnership—but with one key difference: climate change. The region’s iconic Narragansett Bay is already 10 inches higher than in 1930.

Data collected and analyzed by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)  confirms this trend toward increased frequency of weather-related disasters nationally and in Rhode Island.  

In 2021, the U.S. experienced 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events. Four of these disasters (Elsa, Fred, Ida and Nicholas) were tropical storms or hurricanes.

"The kinds storms we have up here [in the future] may resemble what we would see in the mid-Atlantic," said Curt Spalding, a long-time Rhode Island resident and co-founder of the Providence Resilience Partnership.

Ocean warming is  increasing the intensity of such storms , researchers say. Meanwhile, higher sea levels also increase the heights to which storm surges or flash floods from more extreme rain events may climb. There is increasing rainfall and greater numbers of Category 4 and 5 storms.

Like many Rhode Island residents, Spalding grew up with a close connection to Narragansett Bay. He recalled his childhood trips on the Bay to go sailing and watch the America’s Cup, a yachting competition first started in 1851 and the oldest trophy in international sport. 

That connection to the water would grow throughout Spalding’s life as he dedicated his career to environmental restoration. Spalding served as Administrator of EPA Region 1 New England during the Obama Administration, and as executive director of Save The Bay, a non-profit dedicated to the protection and restoration of Narragansett Bay, for 18 years. 

 “It was a really exciting thing to be able to take on the idea that we were going to restore and protect it,” Spalding said.

But after substantial strides to restore Narragansett Bay, the concern now is that climate change may cause even more irreparable damage—wiping out the progress made. He also worries the heavy rains and high-level winds that come with hurricanes and other worsening storms are significant factors that Rhode Island is not prepared to handle.

Scientists have predicted an  above-average storm season for 2022—for the seventh year in a row . Due to the increase in storms before June 1st, the NOAA has even considered moving the official start date for the Atlantic hurricane season up to  May 15 .

Springtime rains, too, have grown more extreme. Nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day rain events in the United States have occurred since 1996.

In the spring of 2010, Rhode Island was inundated with over 20 inches of rain in just a little over one month. The state saw record river flooding. For the first time, the Pawcatuck River surpassed storm surge heights of the 1938 hurricane.

"It was horrific,” Spalding recalled.

Due to flooding on Route 95 in East Greenwich, his children’s friends could not get from their home to the school and had to stay with Spalding’s family.

Similar events may occur soon that Rhode Island communities are not adequately equipped to handle, he fears. Another grave concern is the impact of heavy winds. The intense winds associated with hurricanes can damage or destroy homes, uproot trees, knock out power lines and injure or kill people with flying debris.

When Hurricane Henri hit Rhode Island in 2021, it made landfall near the town of Westerly as a tropical storm with about 60 miles per hour winds. Henri caused extreme damage to the state’s power lines, leaving about 76,000 Rhode Islanders in the dark. Major hurricanes are much more intense. They have at least 111-mile-per-hour winds.

“We can't have 10,000 people losing power every time the wind goes above 60 miles an hour - now you have to do better than that,” Spalding said. “We should be resilient.”

Shaun O’Rourke, managing director for programs and development at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, said the damage caused by trees during these “100-year storms” illustrates how the different climate impacts collide to create greater risks. Rhode Island has over 36,000 acres of forest land currently at risk due to drought and invasive species. The state was hit particularly hard by  gypsy moth infestations,  which have killed hundreds of thousands of trees across southern New England.

O’Rourke explains that dead trees are more at risk of uprooting during a storm. When they fall, the dead trees can block key emergency routes and down power lines, causing widespread power and communication outages.

When the Great Hurricane of 1938 hit Providence, a young William Degnan saw firsthand the devastation caused by winds to the trees in Roger Williams Park.

"Roger Williams Park was almost on my way home, and I always liked to drive through it…The Park was very close to my house and became the playground for my contemporaries and me when we were growing up — And now its beauty, peaceful atmosphere, and quiet ambiance were all ‘gone’," Degnan wrote.

While working as a news photographer before enrolling in Brown University, Degnan lived in Providence with his parents and his older brother, Jim, during the Great Hurricane of 1938.  Upon finding his collection of photographs in 2004, Degnan recognized their importance and set about documenting his account of the storm.

"It occurred to me that only people of my age group would be knowledgeable of this event, and this should not be forgotten."

Spalding believes a lack of shared memory and personal connection to the life-altering brunt and sorrows of a major hurricane is a challenge for Rhode Island as its residents try to prepare for increasingly intense storms.

"We lack imagination on this stuff,” Spalding said, pointing out the difference between Rhode Island and southern coastal states, which have seen more extensive 100-year storm events in the past decade. 

Henri in 2021, Sandy in 201 and Irene in 2011 all caused enough coastal damage to result in FEMA disaster declarations. Yet none were strong enough to be considered a 100-year storm. The last major hurricane, meaning a category three storm or higher, to hit Rhode Island was Hurricane Carol in 1954. It was second only in strength to the Great Hurricane of 1938 but caused the most damage to the state.

Spalding also points to the knowledge of Indigenous peoples. Rhode Island was home to the Niantic, Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes when European colonizers arrived. Today, the Pauquunaukit Wampanoag are located in Bristol and the Narragansett Indian Tribe in Charlestown.

In his many years as a regional administrator, Spalding worked directly with tribal leaders in the state. He said they taught him about their people’s history on the land, and the adaptations that made them successful.

“They bring the past to the present because of their storytelling and the continual discussion, and I don't know quite how they do it,” Spalding said. “But they do, and we don't do that; we have a very short memory.”

Before population decimation due to disease and colonial warfare, Spalding said the Native American communities in the area were prosperous and well-settled. They also were aware of the challenges of living so close to the water and built their settlements in areas with higher elevations to protect them from potential flooding.

Degnan recognized the importance of sharing his own memories with future generations. However, he also identified and obstacle: the mental distress of surviving such a harrowing disaster.

The trauma experienced during a hurricane can have severe and long-term impacts on individuals.  Research suggests  that 30 to 40% of direct disaster victims will experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), along with 1 to 20% of rescue workers and 5 to 10% of the general population. Even for those who do not experience PTSD or other similar mental health issues, it can be hard to willingly reflect on such a life-changing event.

"Is it so difficult to understand, that so many people are reluctant to freely discuss what happened to them and their dear ones during a tragedy such as Rhode Island Hurricane?" Degnan questioned. "...The schools and community did not provide counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists to explain our grief to us or tell us how to go on in life. Somehow we faced the problems and did our best."

At the Providence Public Library, efforts are currently underway to extend public memory through the collection of community archives. Rhode Island Collection curator Kate Wells says the goal of their collections is to serve as a "touchpoint to history."

Wells, who grew up nearby in Massachusetts and has been a curator at the Providence library for seven years, remembers visiting the Rhode Island capital city often. It has always felt like a second home to her, she said.  

The Providence Public Library contains many memories of the Hurricane of 1938, Hurricane Carol, and beyond. Here visitors can see that personal connection of the past to the present as described by both Spalding and Wells.

On the third floor of the historic library on Washington Street in downtown Providence, William Degnan’s story is bound in a slim book with an orange cover.

Sixteen years after Degnan’s harrowing ordeal in the 1938 hurricane, Rhode Island once again faced the brunt of a 100-year storm, Hurricane Carol. While slightly weaker, Carol came on suddenly at high tide, causing the most destruction ever seen in the state and becoming one of the first storm names permanently retired due to its extraordinary nature and devastating toll.

The experience of these storms awakened local and state officials to the risks at hand, and led to the development of current protective measures.

"Until recently, there was a generally accepted rule of thumb that hurricanes were likely to occur in Rhode Island about once in every 100 years,” wrote officials from the Rhode Island Development Council in the Hurricane Carol Rehabilitation Study.  “This would appear to be a long enough period for many people to assume a calculated risk of development in areas likely to experience severe hurricane damage. As the population grew, greater numbers of people and larger investments moved into these danger areas. The experience of four hurricanes in the past sixteen years has raised serious doubts as to the validity of past assumptions on hurricane frequency."

Then and now, area leaders continue to work to prepare Rhode Islanders to face the next big storm - in hopes of safer outcomes. Their efforts have included improvements to wastewater treatment plants; an increase in stormwater runoff catchments; and additional barriers and berms to stem the surge of rising floodwaters.

One prominent type of storm protection in Rhode Island is hurricane barriers. The most ambitious is the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence.

Fox Point is a small neighborhood that sits in a very vulnerable area. A center for maritime commerce and a hub for cultural communities with strong ethnic ties, it is located at the base of College Hill. It sits between the Seekonk and Pawtuxet Rivers flowing through Providence.

“Generation after generation, whatever major immigrant group that was coming to the U.S. at the time is represented living in Fox Point,” said Wells, the Providence Public Library curator for the Rhode Island Collection.

Following Hurricane Carol in 1954, when storm surges in Providence reached heights of nearly 16 feet, government officials decided to build a hurricane barrier to protect the city from future floods.

The 700-foot-long concrete structure stretches across the Providence River near the Fox Point area. It has a pumping station and three opening gates. They keep floodwaters from rushing the bay when closed and allow small ships to pass when open. The station's five pumps push the floodwaters from the river into the bay in emergencies.

After graduating from Brown University in 1942, Degnan left the state of Rhode Island and began a 38-year career with the General Electric Company. While living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, it was through the hurricane barrier project that he once again found himself swept up into the world of Rhode Island storms. 

“By sheer coincidence in the late 1950s I was designing large power transformers, and across my desk, one day, landed the request to design transformers to provide power to huge water pumps and navigation gates, as well as the emergency power supply system for that Providence Project,” Degnan wrote. “What an amazing coincidence for my hurricane closure.”

State and municipal governments have installed similar hurricane barriers, sea walls and berms on a smaller scale throughout Rhode Island.

“And now, the question is how effective they will be when sea-level rise and storm surges become bigger,” Spalding said. “Eventually, these heavily engineered solutions will not accommodate nature. …You can never count on us beating nature in this game. It will beat us.”

Infrastructure is thought of in terms of two colors: gray and green. The prior consists of human harnessing of nature. Green infrastructure employs natural solutions to mimic ecosystems.

These nature-based approaches are becoming more prominent and have the potential to help on a massive scale. Research conducted after Hurricane Sandy showed that existing salt marsh wetlands prevented over $635 million worth of property damage along the eastern coast.

"We have really old infrastructure, and no one really knows what it can do and where it's failing. There isn't a systems understanding of all that, so we have to do that, first, or have to do that concurrently while we're looking to build some green infrastructure," Spalding said.

Shaun O’Rourke, with the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB), said most green infrastructure projects in Rhode Island are grant-funded.

One challenge to implementing green infrastructure, he explains, is that many grants require recipients to cover the costs of improvements upfront. This limits who can take advantage of the grants, as smaller municipalities and non-profits interested in making improvements in their areas may be priced out of participation.

The Storm Water Project Accelerator program at the RIIB offers bridge loans that provide the money upfront so that smaller municipalities and non-profit organizations can afford to take on the grants.

“It allows municipalities and non-profits to get this work done better, faster, cheaper,” O’Rourke said. “So that’s some of the innovation that we’re driving by listening to our municipal partners all across the state to be able to drive increased investment into not just the traditional gray infrastructure but also green infrastructure as well.”

One recent example of such a project funded through RIIB was the installment of a turfgrass playing field at Central Falls High School.

Some of the lowest costs per gallon for treating stormwater are through turfgrass, said O’Rourke. However, the field could also fulfill a community need. Before its installation, the high school’s team had no field to play on for home games. “We need to think creatively about financing infrastructure,” O’Rourke said.

Save the Bay too provides an example of how green and gray infrastructure can combine to create resilient spaces. The organization’s headquarter’s, located at Fields Point, employs a variety of innovative design techniques to reduce the building’s carbon footprint while making it more resistant to climate threats.

Visitors to the center, located on a former brownfield site, walk along permeable stepping stones that allow water to quickly drain through cracks into the ground below. Nearby ponds collect and treat stormwater runoff from the parking areas, while native plant landscaping mimics the natural ecosystem and minimizes the need for fertilizer that could cause nitrogen runoff into the Bay.

The building maximizes sun exposure with windows facing south for passive heating. A solar array system on the building’s west wing roof powers the lights inside, one of the largest solar energy systems in the state. Additional greenery grows on the roof to absorb rainwater.

Beyond standing as an example of climate resilient architecture, Spalding believes the most important role of the Save the Bay Center is its use in connecting children from urban areas to the Narragansett Bay, cultivating love and respect for the unique ecology and its role as a recreational resource.

“Commitment to the Bay is something that's sort of embedded now in the scheme of people's minds,” Spalding said.

When implementing changes to prepare for the next several decades, Spalding is hopeful that better solutions may come with continuing advances in science and technology.

“ …we have to recognize that we have to leave room for [the next generation] who are a lot younger than me,” Spalding said. “And people behind you to come up with better solutions than we can imagine today.”

One such recent effort brought together teams of college students from across the Eastern Seaboard to take part in the Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay challenge, sponsored by the nonprofit Remain Nantucket. Students spent the spring 2022 semester learning from locals and climate experts, and imagined design scenarios to address sea rise. An interdisciplinary group from Northeastern University in Boston reimagined the Fox Point area with a focus on social equity, examining the inequities of the past to propose a better future. 

One focus of their project was on reducing the risk residents will face from urban stream flooding during extreme precipitation events, a risk seen firsthand by Spalding during the 2010 floods.

At the University of Florida, the archaeologist Ken Sassaman is studying hurricane memory, memorialization, and how they change—or fail to change— land-use patterns and resilience. 

Sassaman said the differences in response explored in his studies show how communities ravaged by a natural disaster can move forward on one of two paths: memorialization and abandonment for a safer site, or fortification to protect from future events of similar destructive terror. In particular, he referenced two Texan towns, Indianola and Galveston, as a "study of contrast."

To William Degnan, it was clear that Providence had chosen the latter path: fortification. In his recollections, he wrote of confidence and optimism that adaptive design solutions such as the Fox Point Barrier and the imaginings constructed by these Northeastern students today could protect the city from future harm.

“‘Never’ is a dangerous thing to say. To say the City’s elders ‘have taken positive steps’ is a better way [to] say it. Amsterdam in Holland and Venice, Italy, have succeeded. Why not Providence?”