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WO R K S
P R O GR
E
S S
A D MI N I S T R A T I O N
**********
For Release on Delivery.
Monday , Seytember 26, 1938 .
11
MEETING TH:E CHALLENGE OF DI SASTER11
The f ollowing address was delivered by Harry L. Hopkins, Wor ks
Progress Admi nistr a.tor, from Boston, !ii.ass ., over the Red network of
the :National Broadcasting Company, 11 : 30 to 11:45 p .m. E.S.T. , Monday,
September 26 , 1938 :
New England and portions of Hew York State are slowly but steadily
digging themselves out from under the greatest hurricane di saster in the history
of the North Atlantic area .
Perhaps I should say the worst hurricane disaster
in any region of our country .
Death Md destruction , through v:ind and wat ert
have struck me,ny times in other portions of the United Stat es , but never on
such a broad. front as this , nor in such thickly- settled communities .
The
int ensity, the location and the consequenc es of this storm are unprece dent ed.
It is an appalling catastrophe.
I say i t IS an appalling catastrophe , because the emergency is NOT
over.
By means of radio and m0ving pictur e , news:oapers and photographs , the
havoc caused by this tropical hurricane has been brought to your attention .
For days you have read or listened to reports of t ragic happenings _ over an
area hundreds of miles in extent .
You know th8.t the winds have subsided, and
that the Atlantic is again as smooth a s the proverbial mill pond .
You know
that all the res ources of the Federal G0vornment have been rushed to tho aid
of states and local cormnunities and that emergency work has been going on
feverishly ever since last Wednesday night , whan a stunned and prostrate
section of
our naj/Jf?Rd:\:iysued its appeal for help.
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You are perhaps justified, therefore , in t hinking it i s all over;
that given time , and a little help , houses will npring up where they stood
befor e the wind hit them; that d::uns will be repaired, roads r ebuilt, trees replanted, docks r estored and conununications reopened.
It 1 s bad.
this thing .
But some of us have seen
It is 6oing to take a long- time, a lot of work and
plenty of money to r estore normal conditions.
men and we have the money.
Wo have the time . we have the
:But no power can r estor e the victims of drowning
and accident.
Tonicht , the death list approaches 1 , 000 .
ually no one can for etell.
What it will be event,..
There arc forty- o1d mil ~s of s ho reline in Rhode
Island alone now being searched for bodies .
Our WPA workers have been finding
them buried under the debris which lines the southern coast of Now England .
They have be en washed ashore , alo!lg with the houses and wreckage , just like
so much driftwood.
possible .
We t ve got to find them all, every single one, if humanly
We havo got to search not only tho beaches , where human beings
and hou:ses were toss ed up to ge ther in one big junbl od mass , but we have got
~o explore with boats ever-;/ creek and inlet in the p2.th of tho tidal wn.ve .
I said. that some of us havC' seen t his thing.
Who ever v1ould have
dreamed that a Carrib ean storm , bo.rn down amo~1g the West Indi es, would some
day lash the coast of Long I sland and New F:cglc.nd , kill many hundr eds of
unsuspecting people . wr eak physical &..'UUage amounting t0 hundreds of millions
of dollars and in some localiti es , change the ent ire s horrelino?
The q_uestion a.ns,·1ers its elf •
realm of fantasy , much less reality .
It was never believed within the
E~t on Sunday , acco~~ani ed by other
federal a,nd state officb,ls , we saw the r esults of this storra from en ai rplane and were aghast at t ho fur-J of the elements v,hen they are beyond control .
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We flew over Long Island , where entire cottage communities were
ruined.
We fl ew over Thimble Islands, off New London , where the waves swept
houses and humans into the sea .
I thought of those terrorized residents who
were seen waving sheets in the gale and then suddenly were seen no more .
their bodies came ashore at New London.
But
They didn 1 t have a chance .
We flew over Block I sla~d , isolated out there in the ocean , cut off
from the world.
We flew up the Connecticut River Vall ey and saw, below us ,
water in the main business streets of HartforQ , where a river flood had superi mposed i ts menace on hurricane damage .
Only tho emergency work of t housands
of WPA workers and other employees, toiling for trro days and two nights on
sandbag levees , saved the Ca.p i tal of Connecticut from major disaster .
Even at that , twelve percent of the population had to be evacuat ed
and roust be quartered , fed , clothed and cared fo r until they can go back into
their water~•.sGaked dwellings .
We gazed do,m on Norwich, Connecticut , where mud rose n.t1kle-deep
in the main square v<l1en the Thames flooded .
Norwich, too , was cut off but even
before the residents needed personal aid the city needed chloride of lioe for
sanitation purposes - and it was rushed to them at once .
WPA workers , boys
from the NYA work projects , CCC enrollees , Boy Scouts and city employees cleaned
up the square , removed the heal t h throat , unblocked the main highways , and
brought order out of chaos .
That is tho way , in fact , that every ono of these
stricken communities has gone about its task of meeting the emer gency .
We flew over Now London , where fire followed the flood-tide and
gutted a whole r ow of stores and buildings on one of th-3 main streets .
Drinking
water the r e still has t o be boiled, as it does in many localities in the path
of the storm.
We flew over Westerly , Rhode Island• where the death toll was
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extremely high and where the basement of an old building was co nve:r-ted i nto
a public morgue .
We grounded our plane at the Airport in Providence , where Natio1:al
Guardsmen patrol the streets and highways and marticl law ext en:ls throu ghout
the er.t ir e c tricksn section .
Water stood ei ght or ten f eet in th'3 busines s
h eart of the city during ti1e height of the gale .
Pr ovidenc e is going abo-.....t the
job of r e storation with it s head up , although deprived for dD.ys of li ght and
powe r, and with i ts p rinci pal stores clos ed until the wn.ter ccn be pump ed from
It is over 100 yenrs sinc e anytMng like the flood of last
the bas 8ments.
Wednes day had occu.rrrid in Providenc e .
Is it any wond"3r t he sec ond city in New
England was unpr epa.r ed for a ca t as trophe of t his kind?
From Providence wo tcur od the hard- hit section of ~Ta rragans ot t
Bay by motor cAr, accompanied by Governor Q,uinn 7 of Rhod.e Isl0nd.
At Narrl1.gnn-
sett Pi er, ne i ghbors saw thei r n011:t- door dwelle rs torn away by t ns, surf and
drowned.
At Charl0stown and adjoinil:g b eaches , hundre(ls of cot tagos w1-:iro demol-
ished and swept ba ck inland almo'.3t to the main hi 5 hway by tho hugo TI[wo .
Tal e s of heroism have come t o light sh0wi '1.g the courage n.r.td. s elfsacrifico of storm victims.
Men und women formed human- chr-1.ins in tho effort to
make t.hei r way to safety.
Othor3 ma.nn0 d bo[:,.ts in t he rngi ng cr ooks in the
att empt t o r escv.e fri ends .
Ono fleeing coupl o in an a 1.1tomobile stopped to
assist fri encis -
a ll were drowned..
Ever ywhe r e in the storm ~0ctions , t he
peopl e of Nov: Engla.n d and New York have sho,m a s pl er.di d. exampl e of courage and
s elf-reliance.
Not all the r eli ef and. sal7agc work has be er. done by public
agenci es; r•Jsidents in the devastated. ar eas have shown the way , by taking in
fellow , sufferers and victims and do i ng a ll in the ir power to help the i r r el atives and n e i ghborc.
It is t ypic~lly N0w England, typically American.
Today, ~t least 100,000
_,:_ !?~glJ:ized by_,.._
WPA workers are engagod in emergency
activity. N@~TAWf59:!EfBtUr<.tt\1E lt51ttid.ent , I h1:.,ve a~
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peo:9le of New England and New York tm.t the ful lest .cooperation will be givon
by the United States Government in thi c co.tastropho.
We realize that we are
dealing vii th thousands of pe-:ipl 0 who hn.vc never be en called upon to ask for
reli ef .
:But this is
aid and we will a.ct
a.;1
unprecedented calamity .
,;,ri th
Many of them will now seek
a full undcrstand.in.:i; of their o.tti tudc, .
a question of being asked for money, as if it were charity .
It is not
I hap:9en only
to be the Administrator , and I do not lik8 tho iden. that the peopl 0 of the
devastat ed sections thi nk they are asking the governmznt for money .
I do
not fe el that way about it , and I told the governors so at our confer 0nc0
to da_y .
I f eel thC>,t Congress has appro:::iriated part of your own money for a
purpose ancl t hat this pur pose includes meetine; and taking care of disasters ;
t hat it is your money , in every sense of the ,,ore.• o.nd I hap1)en to be , f or
the moment , a public official who has the responsibility of administering it .
We wish to assure you thn.t we approach this with the full knowledge of the
public trust that we hold , and that ~e are going to use every avenue to meet
this end promptly nncl at once .
It
:13
the pcople 1 s money a::1d it is going
to be u ~ed for the peoplc 1 s benefit .
There is a big job to be done .
Not least among the tasks is to
control the menace to health and life from dis'ease .
As
ev eryone knows, the
efficient , faithful, ever-reliable .American R3d Cross is on the job and that
means the situ~tion will be in hand .
Tn1e to its tradition and its record,
Red Cross officials were early on the scene , with doctors, nurses , ambulances ,
first - aid and field equipment , prepared to set up field stations , innoculation
clinics n.nd. otherwise make all provi~ions against tho spread of a.is ease .
It
is the American Red Cross that will go into the homes of victims , supply them
with food and. necetrni ties . and undertake the humane and intimate task of
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family r ehabilitation.
!fay I add my own appeal to that of Pre&'idcnt Roos evelt
and ot he rs that you heJ.p make its cl.rive fo r funds for this necessary work
successfu.l..
The Ame rican Red C:coss has nev er yet l et us down; we cannot
affo rd to l et the Red Cross down.
The amoun~ of
prop erty damage to a great s ection of om· cotmtry
cannot be es timated yet with any degree of accuracy.
many instanc e s ho.s been irrcpnrable.
The loss of tr eos in
Historic elms and oaks have been
destroyed in many of the frunous pa rks and greens of New England.
structure s have been badly damaged or r educ ed to wreckage .
have been injur ed, bridges and small dams washed out .
small slli"pping has been tremendous.
Thousands of
Roads and culverts
The destruction of
In some fis hi ng localities whole fl ee ts
of small boats have been practically wiped. out.
Thus i n the rura l as well as in tho more t hickly-popula t ed areas ,
many have been thro;-m out of employment or rendered unabl e to pursue their
ordinary means of livelihood.
This is an aft er ~ath of the storm its elf that
constitut e s a responsibility which tho WPA willingly assunes with the communiti es themselves and which its r es ourc es are pl oclgcd to meot .
waterfront s ections, work is imperative at once .
In oany
This is because cold weather
is not far re1:10vod and do cks , bulkheads and breakwat ers should be r epaired
as so on as possible .
Ther e is a great work to be done and I can assure the
people and the officials of the r egions affect ed , tha t t he government will do
its share in every way po s s ible.
Fror:1 this c.isast cr has sprung a spirit of coopera.tion and m1animous
will to bring about r ehabilita ti on and r es toration.
agencies are working as one to,,arct tha t achieveoont .
All public and private
Tho WPA, like other fed-
er al units, will do all in its power to assist in this emergency .
ting red tape for action.
and done without Qi..~~~.by
We are after r esults.
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We are cut-
This job is going to bo done
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