20 Years on. The Big Storm

[Wild-Woman]

Just wondered if any of you had memories of that momentous night.
What's your story of the event, if indeed you were around then.
How did it affect the ecology of you area, did it benefit eventually? What lessons did we all learn?
Jules

[rlchew]

Can you believe it is 20 years since the "The Big Storm"?

I missed it entirely. I was on holiday in Cyprus and returned the morning after. En route we had a captain's weather forecast as you do and I recall him saying it was "rather windy" in the UK.

After arriving and travelling through London I recall seeing some damage and wondering what had happened but I didn't get the full story until I arrived home and saw the TV.

I can not remember much serious damage in my part of the world (Essex) but there were some dreadful pictures coming out of Kent and Surrey in particular.

What did we all learn? .... never trust a weather forecast .... although in fairness the science and technology has improved hugely as BBC Countryfile showed yesterday.

Today has dawned very quiet .... no 20th anniversary blow!

Richard

[agrumpycow]

I remember it well, although I was only a kid at the time. I remember in particular an old tree on a green near us. I can't remember what kind of tree it was but it was very old. It was left standing after the storm but the local powers that be decided it had been damaged to the extent that it was dangerous and had to be removed. I remember a crowd gathering as it was taken down and everyone being really upset as it was a kind of landmark in the area. I've still got a piece of the wood somewhere I took as a kind of momento!

[Mikeakabigman]

I remember it very well, I'd just started in my current job with the Forestry commission at the Research station in Surrey.
It caused a tremendous amount of damage in our forest and we lost many valuable and unusual specimen trees.
Added to that it brought down over head power lines which meant we were without electricity for 10 days at home and also at work.
My job entails security and building maintenance at the Forest research station which meant I was in the front line with others keeping power going, using portable generators day and night to help save years of valuable scientific experiments and samples from being lost.
Many samples of microscopic insect and plant tissue are kept in -20 freezers for ongoing research, it would have been a major blow to have lost these.
Not something I'll ever forget !

[smartie]

I remember it very vividly. I had been to the funeral of a young friend in the morning, and remember the keening of the rising wind and leaves whipping about us as we stood by the grave. I remember sitting in the hall (which seemed the safest place) very scared in the early hours of the morning - me at one end of the hall staring wide-eyed at the equally wide-eyed cat at the other end while the wind screamed round the house and we heard the rending of trees all around us. I remember the relief when the falling lilac tree in the garden missed the house by 6 feet (beautiful tree, it was).

And the following morning, I remember the difficulty of explaining to Derek, who was about to fly back from the USA, that I wouldn't be picking him up from Heathrow because it had been "very windy" and there were trees all over the roads like matchsticks.

If it taught us anything I think it was that nothing is as permanent as it seems.

[briar rose]

I remember is vividly as well, we lived in Guildford, Surrey then, I was pregnant at the time with my youngest, and also owned a horse, the next morning my husband came home from work to take me to the stables as he didn't want me going and getting stranded on my own in my condition, the journey that usually only took 10 minutes, took 2 1/2 hours, there were trees all over the roads, and cars abandoned, but we had to keep going, we didn't know what we'd find when we got to the stables, when we did get there, there was only one stable that had been damaged, and that had a tree right through the middle of it, and had brought down a overhead powercable with it, luckily the occupant was a Shetland Pony and he was squeezed into one corner, if it had been one of the horses he probably would have been killed, the horses were all spooked but fine, there were plenty of trees down and had brought down fencing with it, but luckily we didn't know anyone that had been hurt or had property damaged other than the stable.

[lol geoff]

I was working in the Landscape Department for London Borough of Bexley at the time and luckily had a chainsaw certificate. I made quite a few bob on overtime for the following few months. There were a lot of tree teams and electricity workers drafted in from up north to help with the clearance operation, and were living in caravans for months. The price of roofing tiles and materials went, well, 'through the roof' if you could still find them after the first few days, and there was also a lot of new roofing firms springing up everywhere. The only damage we sustained apart from a few trees down in the garden was a damaged rear windscreen in the car where a few of the roof tiles had been blown off the roof. We were lucky, I can still see in my minds eye the whole roof of a block of about 20 garages just suddenly peel up from one corner then lift off about 50 feet in the air and disapear into the far distance, and we never did find our dustbin. I believe that once the initial panic had finished most of the timber from the more exotic trees located around the borough was stored and later sold to furniture makers and timber merchants from all over the country. In the following years we were kept very busy replacing the fallen trees along with many more new planting schemes. Looking back now although we lost lots of important and stately trees I would say that the new planting schemes have been more sympathtic by planting more natives and planting trees better suited to their location rather than constanly being kept in check. Apart from a few of the old snarly branches that were not trimmed at the time you would never have known it had happend. It certainly doesn't seem like 20 years ago.

[svenrufus]

I got woken up by the noise of the wind, and went to look out of my bedroom window. I saw the horse chestnut on the road outside our house rocking back and forward and back and forward and back... and back... and land on our house. It was coming right for me, and as a teenager with a vivid imagination, I was picturing the news reports of 'one fatality in southend', (why I didn't just step back out of the way, I can't tell you). Luckily the tree was just far enough away, that the branches that got the house did no more than damage the paint work before snapping off.

We lost a great apple tree in the back garden, but despite the ridicule of our neighbours we propped it back up in the aftermath and it is still going strong today. We gained a shed as well, but it wasn't in the best condition.
It was the most surreal night and day after, walking around looking at houses where the fronts had just been blown out, trees everywhere, cars squashed. Had that sort of apocalyptic air that I have only ever felt since then when we had the floods in 2000 when I was in Notts (which combined with the fuel strikes and rail go slow after some accident, it felt like the world was coming to an end).

I actually think in many ways it was quite a positive experience for ecology. Opened up a lot of space in uniform stands of woodland, leaving great dead wood habitat - there are still some fantastic hulks of the beeches that came down in the woods up the road from me. More variety in age structure etc etc. The emotional reaction was fair enough in the immediate aftermath, but actually, nature did pretty well out of it.

[paulchandler6]

I was lucky, it took me 9 hours to get home that day from Surrey to Oxfordshire. So many roads closed with fallen trees and debris. Instead of the usual 60 mile trip I did almost 100 miles with having to detour and lost my front bumper to a collision with a fallen tree.
I drove down to Penzance the following day to go to Scilly and again had to detour because of closed roads. We didnt seem to have it as bad here as further south and east but the tree loss was pretty bad.
We also gained some fence panels and a plastic dustbin.

Paul

[lol geoff]

Originally Posted by paulchandler6

............. and a plastic dustbin.

Paul

That could be mine....Have you still got it?

[Paul mabbott]

I'm famous for getting up and saying, 'Was it a bit windy last night?' - before having pointed out that the garden fence had gone missing .....

[nightshade]

I watched the cycle sheds at work collapse(about 40'x20' 3 sheds!)
My 2CV got a little light at times on the drive home
I walked to collect my boys from school and held them tight as their feet came off the ground
Fences and bins going by the window horizontally,and a huge length of brick
wall blown over with a roar
The tiles on a neighbours roof rippling in time to the gusts

[paulchandler6]

Originally Posted by lol geoff

That could be mine....Have you still got it?

yes actually still have it minus the lid that dissapeared in another big wind......long way from you though.

Paul

[Surrey Snow]

I was staying in a hotel in Essex (Great Dunmow) as I was working away.

I awoke early and switched on the light, to no avail.

I got up and opened the curtains to find a huge Beech tree firmly "planted" across the cars in the car park.

Something I'll never forget is the tremendous noise, the "howl".

Did anyone see the program on ITV on Tuesday?

SS

[naturelover]

yes i did,horrid brings it all back not that i can forget.

[John]

That was a night not to forget for me. I was a long distance lorry driver and was delivering through the night that night.

I had started mid afternoon at Southampton then Portsmouth before moving onto Chichester and Shoreham. By the time I had left Shoreham things were getting scary. My next drop was at Ashford in Kent, which was a fair drive. I'm still not sure where I was when I came to an area that really scared me. I was in the middle of a wooded area and trees were rocking everywhere. Branches were being ripped off and were flung across me. How I didn't crash I don't know but one thing was certain I had to get out of there quick.

I hadn't gone far before the force of the wind was pushing me across the road and I was fighting for control of the wagon. Up ahead of me was a bridge and I decided to stop under it. Good decision as within minutes the noise from the increasing wind was horrendous and I sat there watching trees being ripped up by the roots and flung to the floor.

That bridge, as far as I am concerned, possibly saved my life as by the time the winds had abated the destruction before me was complete. Hardly a tree was standing upright and the road was virtually impassable in places.

Thankfully there was enough room to get me a few miles along the road until I reached an area where a clearing operation was under way. I was soon joined by a few cars and a couple of lorries as well.

The clearing crew told us to park up whilst they went about the job of clearing the trees from the road and whilst doing it they came over with tea and sandwiches. It was a real Dunkirk spirit and after a few hours we were on our way.

It took me two more days to get back to Birmingham and on the way I saw scenes that were pitiful with areas reduced to nothing more than splinters or rubble.

A night that I hope will never be repeated on in the UK ever again.

John

[Garden Carpet]

I dont remember the night in particualar. I was staying with my sister in Melkshom Wilts and was going back to Guernsey the following day.. we were driving along for some time before we realised we were seeing more than our fair share of fallen trees. It was amazingly calm the next day. Both of us were suprised to hear there had been such a high wind in the night.

That year in France the devastation in the Normandy and Brittany forests was terrible to see. I am sure the older locals thought that tanks had been through their forests again.

Jaki