On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 14:10:12 -0000, "Gavin Staples"
wrote:

The October 1987 Storm

My Comment:
Just a request here, did anyone on this ng
experience this? If so what was it like where you lived? I was living in
Australia at the time and missed it.

We were on a small village estate near Stowmarket in mid Suffolk. For
us, the night seemed windy but not excessively so but it didn't take
long to work out it had been otherwise. After finding we had no power
or telephone in the morning, I left for work as normal. Our part of
the estate seemed virtually unaffected, apart from some missing tiles
and a garage roof which had blown off and up, coming down again at an
odd angle to the walls.

I got to the entrance of the estate and that was as far as I or anyone
else there could drive for two days. Either direction out for several
hundred yards was a carpet of fallen trees, mature oaks, elms and
saplings across the road in both directions, enlivened by the odd
shower of sparks from fallen cables. After a few hours, it became
clear that for several miles around the roads were completely
impassable and that the prospect of any official help in the near
future was remote. The parish council and a local farmer got a gang
together with chain and bow saws and for the next two days, we cleared
what we could ourselves - around half a mile of continuous trees and
shrubs from the road and a tour of people's houses where owners had
reported that trees had fallen on them or become dangerous.

We couldn't shift the biggest trees and just cut a single track
through what had been the top branches (it was several weeks before
all of these were cleared from the byroads). By the second day, most
of us were completely knackered. The last address we called on
appeared to have no fallen trees at all. I knocked on the door and a
little old lady appeared. "Hello there, we can't see a fallen tree in
your garden - is one of them damaged?" "Oh , nothing's fallen down or
dangerous - there's just a tree in the back garden I've never liked
and I want it chopped down". Considering how we felt at the time, our
response was remarkably polite.

After a couple of days most roads were passable, although it was a few
days more before power came back for us. My wife got to work at Bury
St Edmunds 20 miles away only to get grilled about why she hadn't been
able to get to work earlier or phone in. She explained why but was
initially disbelieved by her boss - the west of the county was much
less affected and everyone else there had got in ok. They thought the
media were exaggerating what had happened.

For me the most stunning sight was Rendlesham forest near Woodbridge.
This was a fairly mature pine forest in East Suffolk not far off being
felled and there were rumours it had been flattened - we travelled
there a few days later and could hardly believe what we saw. Right up
to the horizon, nearly all the pine trees were just, well, gone. Those
that hadn't been uprooted had been snapped in two and amongst the
layer of fallen greenery, their trunks stuck up like splintered
matchsticks. I struggled through a tangle of branches to look at one
of these trunks - it was around eighteen inches across and had been
snapped off about eight feet up. A huge area was affected but at the
same time it was quite localised - near the centre we could see at
least a mile and probably further before there was anything left
standing but at its fringes there was hardly any damage at all.

This pattern of areas being severely hit and others much less so
seemed to be a common experience in the area, although Rendlesham
Forest was an extreme example.

John Rainer