Blizzard of '78 | STORM OF THE CENTURY
Published Feb. 6, 1998
"I'll never forget it. I was sitting in my living room when the waves and the wind were rocking the house. Then, this one wave hit. It was a sound like no other. It roared and whined like a siren. The house groaned and I knew it was time to get out."
- Ginny Deveau, whose home in the Beachmont section of Revere was destroyed by the storm. Homes in Scituate (above) took a similar beating.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(By Doreen Iudica Vigue, Globe Staff)
wenty years ago today, the most vicious northeaster in New England's history began to blow.
It was the kind of history-altering event that, even now, transports people to where they were the moment it hit. And the memories of those who lived through the Blizzard of '78 are still detailed and emotional two decades after the last mammoth snowbank melted.
In two days of furious weather, the ''storm of the century'' ravaged the coastline, smothered the region in over two feet of snow, claimed 54 lives, dismantled 2,000 homes, drove 10,000 people into shelters, and caused $1 billion in damage.
More than 3,500 cars, trucks, and their cold and frightened drivers were stranded along Route 128 after the blinding snow piled higher than wheel wells, doors, hoods, and roofs.
Scituate and Revere were the hardest hit communities, where a swollen, wind-whipped ocean caused devastation and death.
When it was over, there were reported snow depths ranging from 27 to more than 50 inches across New England, plus drifts of up to 15 feet. Compounding the disaster were the 20 inches of snow still on the ground in some areas from a storm three weeks earlier.
"It was one in the morning by the time help arrived. We had been sitting in our car since 8 o'clock. The snow was so high around the car, I could only see the trooper's boots outside my window. We were so grateful to be alive, to be saved..."
-Jack Fargo of Brockton, who was among the 3,000 motorists stranded on Route 128 (left).
Massachusetts took on the look of a war zone. Army and National Guard troops arrived to haul away the walls of white.
The blizzard shook people to the core, forever taking some of the romance and innocence out of a silent snowfall or the plaintive wail of the sea.
But New Englanders are hardy souls.
No driving was allowed for six days, so people skied, snowshoed, tugged kids in sleds, and hitched rides on plows to get where they needed to go. Low on provisions, some feasted on lobsters flung to shore by the surf while others painstakingly rationed dwindling amounts of milk and bread.
To a person, the recollections of destruction are tempered by inspiring tales of neighbors digging each other out, storeowners giving away their wares, and stranded travelers harbored in the homes of caring strangers. There was a life-affirming, faith-restoring sense that ''we're all in this together.''
Through it all, friendships were forged, babies were born, lessons were learned, from weather forecasting to storm cleanup to what cooks best over a bottle of propane. Even politics was impacted: Ordinarily staid Governor Michael S. Dukakis realized, with the help of a turtleneck sweater, that he could be a dress-down, take-charge kind of guy.
So much pride was taken in riding out the storm that souvenirs were sold to commemorate it. Bumper stickers and T-shirts proclaiming ''I survived the Blizzard of '78'' were displayed like battle stripes. Some still hang, yellowed and tattered, in seaside homes, as a memorial to the force of nature and as a testament to the human spirit.
