20 Years Ago

[Thermo]

Well 20 years ago i was living in central Brighton and our road ended by a big tree lined park called the level. Went to bed blissfully ignorant of what was going to happen overnight. I was woken up in the early hours to find part of the chimney stack on the end of my bed.

In the morning we went to the end of our road to find that it was impassable. Probably 1 in 3 of the great elms that lined the park had fallen. There were crushed cars and trees everywhere. I can still vividlly remember a bright yellow crushed TR7 under one tree. I spent the morning playing with chainsaws helping to clear the road. Great fun!

I then got a few weeks off of college as it had lost its roof and spent them working for my dads building company repairing roofs. We only did them for existing customers and you couldnt get roofing materials for love nor money. We used to do one roof and the little old ladys would come out and ask us to repair their roofs for them. Most of the time it was a few slipped tiles and we would simply put them back. Most of the time we just used to take a fiver for a drink for doing it as it only took ten minutes to do. Then the tossers came in and flooded the area ripping people off. They were charging them hundreds to do the smae job.

Anybody else got memories of the storm? (not you crafty you werent born then!)

Cant believe it was 20 years ago either

 

[grrinc]

I was an apprentice then. I got a call saying dont bother coming in, the site we were on is shut down for a bit. I spent the next few days just catching tit bits on the news. S'funny, but back then as a youngun' I didnt really appreciate the fuss it caused. I do remember everyone suddenly becoming a roofer overnight. A freind of mine still is one - and he was a decorator the night before the storm!!

 

[corgiman]

I slept through it meself

 

[ninebob]

Well 20 years ago i was living in central Brighton and our road ended by a big tree lined park called the level.

Which road, out of interest?

 

[Thermo]

park crescent terrace, the one with the salvation army at the end

 

[tim west]

Mr Fish, Grrrrrrrrr

 

[masona]

Anybody else got memories of the storm?

Cant believe it was 20 years ago either

Nor can I I remembered it well, I couldn't get to work People in my area were having their roof repair even though most of them was nothing to with the storm as the insurance companies were telling them just send us the bills, couldn't cope with the demands, loads of cowboys roofer were cashing in on it. Also I remember losing some money on the Black Monday stock market crashed in 1987 just after the storm or just before

 

[chr15]

Yep-I remember it well,I lived in Eastbourne but traveled to Brighton most mornings to load up equipment for the days work. The seafront road from Eastbourne to Brighton was like a war zone for quite a while with roofs missing and big windows blown in,I had a job getting in that morning.
A lot of old trees fell on the green behind the pavillion area as well and didn't the Sevenoaks become one oak theat night too?
I missed work for a couple of days due to no power on the local building sites and properties in Brighton where I used to work, telephones in my area were off for a couple of days too.
I had my younger brother staying with me for a few days during this time and the morning after the storm when he got out of bed I said to him,'did you hear the hurricane last night?' and he said, ,'hurricane?' Heavy sleeper!

 

[tawelfryn]

I was an apprentice at the time with a building company.
We were doing some roof repairs on the day the storm struck.
I remember being on the roof, with the wind getting stronger and stronger, to the point where overhead electrical wires were swinging so badly, they were touching with huge sparks and loud cracks!
I didn't stay on the roof long after that, thinking this wind is a bit strong now.

 

[Space cat]

Mr Fish was on TV this morning. First off he explained that nobody rang up asking about hurricanes. You can't make phone calls into a live broadcast studio. He was covering up for somebody else who had phoned OUT to tell somebody about a completely different hurricane - in the Caribbean!

But he conceded that the Met Office did make a mistake. They knew about the storm and that it might be heading inland but they changed their minds when all their computer models showed it moving South along the English Channel.

That just goes to prove the old(ish) saying: To err is human; to really mess things up you need a computer!

 

[tim west]

Mr Fish was on TV this morning. First off he explained that nobody rang up asking about hurricanes. You can't make phone calls into a live broadcast studio.

you could to the gallery and the message get passed on, and denial is all he's done since, I find it hard believing him having watched the original broadcast. whether taken out of context or not he actually said it on air. Now he seems to be backtracking.

 

[JohnD]

I was living on the South Coast, as the weather was getting up I heard a few things flying about outside, went out intending to pick up the bins, I saw bits of my fence had blown away (and I never found them again) but wind was too strong to breathe properly (like if you stick your head out of a car window) and there was flying debris.

I retreated inside and went back to bed, listening to tiles skating over my roof and falling down on the other side of the house. After a while the power failed, and in pitch black (no streetlights either) I couldn't stay awake any more.

Nearby, some homes lost their roofs and extensions; caravans and dinghies went flying. Luckily it was not holiday season so mostly unoccupied.

I heard later that it was lucky the storm came at night, if it had been daytime with people outside or on the road, deaths would have been much higher.

It would have been difficult to work outside trying to rescue anyone.

 

[poshman]

I was a milkman that day, all the empties blew off the float I left not long after that ,worst job ive had in my life

 

[oilman]

you could to the gallery and the message get passed on, and denial is all he's done since, I find it hard believing him having watched the original broadcast. whether taken out of context or not he actually said it on air. Now he seems to be backtracking.

So have you never said anything that was ambiguous and found it difficult to get people to accept what you really meant to say?

It was probably a blessing that it happened at night, and that people DIDN'T know it was coming, or they might have been out trying to stop their shed blowing away and getting killed by falling roof tiles.

 

[Shutpa]

Just finished watching the programme about the event, which started brilliantly with real footage from a school trip on the south coast at the time. After that there was so much reconstruction of ' the events during the storm' that the whole thing became a farce. A man-made reconstruction of the power of earth forces, is really a complete non-starter.