East Boston, MA

East Boston, MA

I was 12 years old at the time of Hurricane Carol, living in East Boston, MA in the second floor apartment of our 2-family house. My mother and I were in the kitchen which was a flat-roofed addition to a conventional peaked-roof house. We just sat at the kitchen table and watched Carol as it blew down fences and scattered debris all over.

We were quite disturbed by the constant, howling wind noise and fearful that the windows would blow in, roof blow off, etc. Suddenly, without any warning at all, there was the most deafening noise I had ever heard. It was just a terrible, thundering boom that shook everything. We jumped up, preparing to abandon the house as we'd both thought the whole front rooms had collapsed and the rest was soon to follow. I peeked into the dining room and saw nothing, then going forward to check the living room but still no evident damage. Getting brave, I undertook to run downstairs so as to check things outside. All I had to do was barely open the outside door to find that the back and side walks were strewn with dozens of bricks. It became clear to me that our large chimney had fallen.

The chimney was positioned on the front (old) section of the house, pretty much at the top of the peak roof, some 10 feet above the flat kitchen roof. When the chimney finally gave way it toppled directly into the middle of the kitchen roof, pounded it as if a huge bass drum. Amazingly, neither the roof nor the ceiling was damaged -- only the chimney needed rebuilding.

Henry Allen