1 year later, Cape recalls impact of 3 tornadoes

Jul. 23--HYANNIS -- Thursday's weather calls for possible thunderstorms that could produce small hail and gusty wind on Cape Cod, but hopefully it won't be as severe as one year ago when three tornadoes touched down, leaving a wide swath of destruction in their path.

The rare weather event -- there had been only three tornadoes recorded on the Cape before July 23, 2019 -- occurred midday, but no fatalities or major injuries were reported.

Two touched down in Yarmouth and a third landed in Harwich, although there was widespread damage throughout the region, including in Dennis and Chatham.

"I remember how dark it got in the office," said Sean O'Brien, director of the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment. "When we started to get the (tornado) warnings we moved staff into the basement. It was probably the safest place on Cape Cod because it's an old jail."

O'Brien, who had been monitoring the progress of the severe weather from the basement, received a call from Yarmouth Police Chief Frank Frederickson informing him there had been a weather event in town and saying, "I think we're going to need help."

Within minutes after the tornadoes passed, the county's Multi-Agency Coordination Center was up and running. In less than one hour, county officials were working with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

"I never thought in a million years that we would be responding to a tornado, let alone three on the same day, on Cape Cod," O'Brien said. "The response was amazing. This was a time when Cape Cod came together and our elected officials were there to support us."

O'Brien praised the coordinated effort of affected towns, state government and Eversource to initiate the recovery process.

"I was impressed how quick power was restored and tree-cutting and clearing happened," he said. "It was dangerous for a while, so power couldn't come back right away.

"For a bad situation, it was a great response, and thank God we didn't lose anybody," O'Brien added.

Perhaps the most memorable image that emerged from the tornadoes was the roof blown off the Cape Sands Inn in West Yarmouth.

The 67-room inn has yet to recover, according to owner Bobby Khan.

Khan says an issue with an insurance claim has stalled work on completion of the roof replacement, although the inn's two other buildings are operational this summer.

"They have been jerking us around for almost a year," he said of the insurance dispute that has taken the building's 19 units out of commission for the season. "I never dealt with an insurance company in my life. It's been a nightmare. I wish I had this building open to help make the mortgage payments. We're only open in the summer."

Many businesses took a hit at the time, losing power in the middle of the high season. The state offered an emergency loan fund to help small businesses and later allocated $3 million in the supplemental budget for five Cape towns -- Harwich, Chatham, Yarmouth, Brewster and Dennis.

The Cape failed to get federal disaster funding, though. Municipalities and other public agencies needed to incur $9.7 million in damages to qualify and fell far short of the threshold, suffering about $3.7 million in costs.

Harwich was hit the hardest, monetarily as well as literally.

At least 150 hardwood trees in town were snapped or uprooted, many coming down into roads and onto houses and cars. Wind gusts reached 110 mph.

When the tornadoes hit, Lincoln Hooper, director of public works for Harwich, was in an OSHA class with a handful of co-workers. They got the weather alert on their phones, but like a lot of people, they kind of shrugged it off.

Hooper said he will never do that again.

Nearly everyone lost power across town, and some pockets of the community saw severe damage.

Hooper was driving when the tornadoes hit, and trees and poles started to come down all around him.

"I actually feared for my life," he said. "I will adhere to those warnings in the future."

Roads were blocked all over town, and trips that normally took five minutes could take up to 90.

In the aftermath, Gov. Charlie Baker allocated hundreds of workers and equipment to help with the cleanup.

Crews from as close as Brewster and as far as Holyoke came to the Cape's aid. The National Guard, Department of Transportation, Department of Conservation and Recreation and Department of Corrections also were deployed, with one of the main coordinating points in Harwich.

That was a godsend, Hooper said.

"If this was left up to the town of Harwich to pick up, we would have been at it for months," he said.

One of the best measures of the havoc caused by the storm was the amount of brush that ended up at the town dump. The transfer station was running out of room because of how much debris people were bringing.

"Normally, we gather about 10,000 yards of brush annually," Hooper said. "In two weeks, it gathered 50,000 yards of brush."

It's been a roller coaster of a year since, but the term "unprecedented" still comes to mind, despite how often it's been used to describe the pandemic.

"I know that term gets thrown around," Hooper said, "but it was the worst natural disaster the town of Harwich has ever seen."

Hayden Frank, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norton, explained what happened a year ago.

"We had a supercell thunderstorm with rotation that got going south of Long Island and tracked northeast through the morning, eventually coming to Cape Cod and producing three EF-1 tornadoes," he said. "There was a lot of straight-line wind embedded in it, which caused most of the damage. Tremendous tree damage and widespread power outages were the major impacts."

Severe weather is much more common in the central and western parts of the state, according to Frank, who added that thunderstorms feed off heat and moisture, and it's usually warmer inland as opposed to nearer the ocean. But as the summer season progresses, the ocean gets increasingly warmer and there is less of a deterrent for the storms.

"If this situation happened two months earlier, it wouldn't have been anything," Frank said.

While Cape Cod is not likely to become a "tornado alley," Frank suggests the area could become more prone to severe weather as ocean temperatures rise due to climate change.

"It will lead to somewhat more of a risk for thunderstorms to hold together," he said.

Frank attributes early warning radar technology and wireless emergency alerts on cellphones as playing a significant role in quickly identifying the tornado formation and saving lives last summer.

"Even two minutes of lead time can be enough to get someone from outside to inside," he said.

State Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, said the Cape's rapid recovery from the tornadoes was remarkable, thanks in part to an effective and timely regional and state response.

"Electricity was brought back with a speed I've never seen before," he said. "In hindsight, the summer we're in right now is much more difficult."

Staff writer Ethan Genter contributed to this report. Follow Geoff Spillane and Ethan Genter on Twitter: @GSpillaneCCT and @EthanGenterCCT.

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