The Great Storm of October 1987

Anyone who lived in the south east of England, and was awake during the night of 15^th – 16^th October 1987, will never forget the great storm. My 12^th birthday was just two weeks prior, but even now at 39 years old the events are still quite clear to me.

The day before the storm we’d had a charity event at school, raising money by running laps round our playing field. We even got to meet Olympian swimmer Sharron Davies before for a photo shoot and I was lucky enough to have a chat with her (about toast) as the photographer had to change his film before proceeding with my photo. It was a terribly blustery and wet day, and when I got home, I recall my Dad (a keen weather enthusiast) noting that it was going to be very windy during the night.

Having gone to sleep, the next thing I knew was my Dad waking me and my brother up and in a calm voice he simply said:

"Get up, there's a hurricane outside!"

Even in my half-awake state, being the cock-sure-know-it-all youth a year shy of being a teenager, I retorted quick as a flash with "we don't get hurricanes in this country."

I'd barely finished the words, when the roaring noise hit my ears and shut me up! Technically it wasn't an official hurricane (Michael Fish was right!) but to all intents and purposes it felt like one at the time.

My Dad told us to get dressed as quickly as possible and go downstairs. This wasn't altogether unusual for me as my Dad often woke me in the middle of the night to watch thunderstorms with him, but as I began to dress I found myself staring in disbelief out of the window at a group of sixty feet tall, hundred year old trees thrashing back and forth at impossible angles, all being lit up in the middle of the normally dark night by what seemed like constant lightning.

We made our way downstairs to find my Mum huddled up on the sofa and crying. Storms at the best of times used to frighten her, but this was a different storm to anything we'd heard or seen before. The constant roar was immense and didn’t seem to let up at all. Within minutes of going downstairs the loudest, most scary crashing noise I had ever heard in my life made all of us scream and jump. Before we had a chance to consider what it might have been, it happened again - and again! It was the roof. It was literally being lifted off its weakened supports and was crashing back down to somewhere near to where it was propped before.

Where we lived was at the time one of the highest locations on Foredown Hill in Portslade, so we were obviously a bit exposed to potentially damaging gusts. My Dad didn't waste any time at all in deciding we'd actually be safer elsewhere. We daren't even go upstairs again for fear of being injured or worse. My Grandparents lived on the other side of the village in Drove Crescent, Portslade which was also on a hill, albeit significantly lower and better protected, so my Dad decided we should head over there - it was no more than a 10 minute walk and we'd be there in no time. Or so we thought!

Having grabbed what extra warm clothes we could from downstairs we abandoned the house and started the mile long trek to my grandparents. That said, we'd only just started walking, when I shouted out: "there's a tree in the road!" - I had to shout as the wind was too loud to talk normally.

Foredown Road

Sure enough about halfway down Foredown Road, a massive tree had come crashing down and blocked our route. Several other trees had come down too and we literally had to climb four or five feet over the trees to get down the road. Once we got through and down into the valley the wind was less, but this proved to be short-lived as we slowly fought the gusts climbing up Drove Crescent. As if this wasn't enough we encountered the new danger of roof tiles flying at us from all angles. My Dad suffered a blow straight to his mouth from a piece of debris and he was lucky to get away with a couple of chipped teeth. Me and my Brother can't remember it, but my Dad insists he tied books to the sides of our heads to protect us before we'd left the house – this became a source of mirth over the years as my Dad more and more insisted that’s what he did – he also thought he put a crash helmet on my brother! We’re still unconvinced we had any form of head gear! Anyways, we arrived at my Grandparents without any further injuries.

They were both awake already and had lit several candles as the power cut was now widespread and in fact the only other light was the arcing of the nearby power lines. My Grandad kept hearing tiles coming off his roof and wanted to go outside to check! It took my Dad some effort to keep pulling him back indoors as it was obviously highly dangerous. We stayed there till the sun rose some 3 hours later, the storm having done its worst.

Shortly after sunrise my Dad left us to return home to see how the house looked. He eventually came back to us a couple of hours later, bringing with him some more clothes and the news that two trees had come to rest on the house and porch roofs. Though anxious to get home to have a look, we actually took a bit of a tour around Portslade to see the incredible aftermath of the storm. Walking through the carnage of dozens of cars crushed by trees and hundreds of tiles all around us, it was an incredible experience to take in, although excitement is an inappropriate term as tragically some fatalities had occurred.

We detoured to view the devastation at Easthill Park. There were hundreds of trees down, and the park was never the same again. I wish I’d taken a photo of how the old play park looked as I can only recall it in my mind’s eye now. It was demolished shortly after to make way for new trees which was a real shame because that type of ‘industrial’ play park is not really to be found anymore. Certainly the apparatus were scarier than you’d expect to see in the bark chippings and rubber laden parks that started to appear everywhere in the mid 1990’s.

Despite the immense damage all around, it struck me just how beautifully bright, sunny and eerily peaceful it was. No-one would ever have guessed what had just happened. Indeed when recounting my story to my friends at school (once it had reopened) I remember some telling me that they'd slept through the whole event!

My mates said that we must've been mad to go out in that weather, but upon arriving home and seeing the damage to the house, I was convinced my Dad's judgement had been sound and that we were indeed safer and better off having abandoned the house.

Having got home we saw that amazingly most of the roof was still in place, though many dozen tiles were spread about the area, and the porch had a huge tree embedded in it.

As we started the immense task of cleaning up, I remember my Mum's boss turning up almost to check to see if she had a valid reason for not going to work! 

The Cul-De-Sac we lived in only housed 6 premises, and our house was really the only one that suffered damage, but all the neighbours rallied round to help clear the debris and saw up chunks of massive trees in order to get our home back to normal. Stereotypical as it may now sound in these more enlightened and equality driven times, but the men cleared the paths as the women and the children supplied the tea, horlicks and bacon sandwiches to them. No-one complained, and neighbours who had barely spoken to each other were all now getting on with the job in hand.

Things were back to normal pretty soon, though we had a deja vu moment in January 1990 with a lesser daytime storm which brought it's own excitement as we were dragged out of school, but I'll never forget that night when the fantasy of a ‘storm in a film’ became reality.