Blizzard of ’78 still fresh in people’s minds

Feb. 06--PEABODY -- For Peabody resident Pat Brown, the Blizzard of '78 was an event she will never forget.

She saved the newspapers that give a glimpse of the nor'easter 40 years ago today. The storm, she said, was as memorable to her as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

"I kept it because it was an historical event," Brown, a part-time employee of the Beverly Housing Authority, said of the newspapers. "This was one of the biggest blizzards that was expected to hit New England since I ever knew."

The clippings, yellowed with age, show roads impassable with snow and roofs of cars peeking out of snow drifts. Essex Street in Salem was buried. Extensive flooding forced the National Guard to rescue people from their homes on Plum Island in amphibious vehicles. Massive front end loaders had to dig out Cabot Street in Beverly.

According to statistics published at the time, 27.1 inches of snow fell in Boston, and winds were recorded at 69 mph. Flooding and storm surge at the high tide forced the evacuation of some 10,000 people along the coast.

Salem received 26 inches in 26 hours from the powerful, slow-moving storm, according to Salem State University climatologist Arthur Francis, who lives in Salem.

A portion of the Liberty Tree Mall's roof collapsed. The iconic Motif No. 1 in Rockport was toppled off its wharf and destroyed.

But the Blizzard of '78 was also a killer.

The storm reportedly killed 54 people in New England, including 29 in Massachusetts, according to one account.

Five of those who died did so at sea: the captain and crew of the pilot boat Can Do out of Gloucester lost their lives as they attempted to rescue the crew of Global Hope, a foundering oil tanker in Salem Sound.

North Shore residents like Brown can reach back four decades and remember what it was like to live through the storm and its aftermath.

Brown, 75, is a longtime Peabody resident who has never seen anything like the blizzard before or since.

"Cars were buried. Homes were buried," she said. "People were trying to rescue people from their cars. I don't remember anything like that afterwards."

Though there were reports of a storm coming, the blizzard seemed to catch folks, especially afternoon commuters, off guard.

Along an eight-mile stretch of Route 128, 3,000 cars and 500 trucks were stranded. Some 5,000 Massachusetts Guardsmen were mobilized, and 350 federal troops with heavy equipment were airlifted to the state. The damage was estimated at $1 billion, according to reports at the time.

For the rest of the week, no one was allowed to drive, and people had to walk or cross-country ski to get around.

A forecaster's perspective

In a written account, having gone through all the data for the storm, climatologist Arthur A. Francis of Salem says words cannot do the blizzard justice.

"You had to live through it to experience the vibrant forces that it produced," Francis said.

Early computer models forecasted a massive, rapid developing storm along the North Carolina coast. It had forecasters wondering when the snow would arrive at Boston. The storm moved slowly -- it was stationary at one time, even looping around to the east northeast.

"On the 6th, the snow commenced and raised havoc with the evening commutes as the massive storm system kept pumping warm moisture-ladened air into the highest reaches of the atmosphere," Francis wrote.

Ipswich saw gusts of 85 mph and 44 inches of snow, the jackpot for snow totals, Francis said.

"Once the snow began, its intensity increased significantly," he wrote. "The hourly snowfall amounts were excessive, as much as three inches per hour in some locations. The buffeting northeast winds swirled the snow into massive drifts. The snow plows were not able to cope with the serious rapid accumulations."

The storm also coincided with high "spring tides," causing a 700-mile-long fetch over the ocean to form to the east. Wave heights from this could be conservatively calculated at 40 feet, Francis said.

Tragedy at sea

When the tankers Global Hope foundered on Salem Sound, vessels from Gloucester's Coast Guard Station attempted to reach it.

And despite warnings from the Coast Guard, so did the crew of the Can Do: Capt. Frank Quirk Jr., Kenneth Fuller Jr., Charlie Bucko, Norman Curley and Donald Wilkinson.

After midnight, the Can Do issued a mayday distress signal. Reports from ham radio operators in touch with the boat's captain and crew describe an increasingly desperate crew fighting hypothermia and injuries after the wind and waves smashed the Can Do's windshield.

In the days following, the bodies of the crew washed up along the North Shore. Can Do had one body within her when she was finally spotted.

The tragedy was later captured in the best-selling novel, "Ten Hours Until Dawn" by Michael J. Tougias.

"The fellow at the Coast Guard told him not to go," recalls 78-year-old Jack Silva of Gloucester, about Quirk and his desire to help the crew of Global Hope. And the Can Do, Silva said, "was a pretty strong boat."

Fuller, one of the crew members, was Silva's brother-in-law, and his body was recovered on a beach in Marblehead, Silva said. It was one of two to wash up there. Because Logan Airport was closed, relatives had to fly in to Manchester, New Hampshire, for the funeral, at which Silva was a pall bearer.

As for the Global Hope, it became wedged on Coney Island in Salem Harbor. It wasn't until high tide in the beginning of March that a salvage company was able to refloat it and tow to Boston.

Seawall destroyed

Mary John Boylan watched from her home on Atlantic Avenue in Rockport as waves crashed into Rockport Harbor during the blizzard.

At high tide at about 11:30 a.m., waves broke into a downstairs apartment.

"Windows were indeed breaking, and I remember one huge swell where large rocks/boulders broke through the exterior door to the patio and smashed a China cupboard and all its contents," Boylan, who now lives in Gloucester, said in an email.

Then, she noticed the seawall to her and her husband's home was gone. Her husband tried to drill holes in the floor to let the water out, but the water came in so fast, he started to tear up the floorboards.

"The next day was a beautiful clear day," Boylan wrote. Friends came over to help them clean up. "We pulled up the water-soaked carpeting and boarded up windows."

With no flood insurance, it took months to replace the seawall and repair the damage. Stunned and sickened by what happened, she took no photos of from that day.

First day in the National Guard

One of the thousands of National Guardsmen mobilized was Mark Borge, 68, of Gloucester, formerly of Rockport.

He took his oath of enlistment in the National Guard at the Commonwealth Armory in Boston, he said, when it began to snow.

Borge, who had already spent four years in the Navy, was working the 2 to 10 p.m. shift at Gorton's in Gloucester when the night manager told him his sergeant had called and that Borge had been activated.

With about a foot of snow on the ground, Borge tried to get to Boston. Over the radio, he heard a state of emergency had been declared, travel had been banned, and National Guardsmen were to report to their nearest armory.

So, Borge headed to Lynn, showing up in his old Navy cold weather jacket, jeans and snow boots. He had to explain that he was dressed that way because he had just been sworn in that morning.

After getting a new uniform, he spent that night in five-ton troop carrier transporting doctors, nurses and workers to hospitals. They used 10-foot poles to probe the snow from the truck's tailgate for trunks, roofs and hoods to stand on. He recalled carrying a pregnant woman over cars and into the back of the truck.

Walking to work

"I don't think anybody ever realized that they were going to see this much and what was going to happen," Brown, of Peabody, said of the snow. The drifts were so deep, she could barely push her way out of her house.

In February 1978, Brown was divorced and her 14-year-old son was living with her. It took them two days to shovel out the driveway.

But there was a silver lining to the driving ban, which forced folks to walk everywhere.

At the time, Brown was a waitress at the former Ocean Delight restaurant on Lynn Street (it's now the location of a Rizzo's restaurant). The restaurant was at the end of her street, so she walked there and worked three shifts a day. There was a line outside of patrons looking for a place to get a meal.

"I made a ton of money," Brown said. "Of course, two to three hundred dollars in those days was a lot of money."

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