Throughout Fire Island, on the morning of September 21, 1938, dozens of residents were enjoying the last days of the season and making preparations to winterize their homes. The Village of Saltaire had leveled the dunes months earlier to accommodate demand for a scenic ocean view for the summer guests. The dunes, which serve as barriers against storms, were overlooked due to the last significant hurricane season having occurred in 1893.
The day prior, the U.S. Weather Bureau in Jacksonville, Florida, detected a Category 5 hurricane on track for the Bahamas, with the potential to hit Florida, which triggered a storm warning for New England. However, the hurricane changed course and was predicted to hit Atlantic City, leaving little time to upgrade the threat to Southern New England and Long Island.
Saltaire residents Mrs. Haas and Mrs. Dubonnet (identified by last name only in press accounts) were running errands throughout the village. Angeline Bazinet and Alice Trottier were playing cards in their summer home while the hired help, Francine Broadnax, was cleaning and closing up the house. Around 2 p.m., there was a brief heavy rain, followed by blue skies. But around 4 p.m., 180-mph winds kicked up out of nowhere, followed by 30-to-80-foot storm surges, flooding Saltaire within minutes, sweeping away over 90 homes into the ocean. Mrs. Haas [Hais] and Mrs. Dubonnet would drown from the wall of water slamming into the village. At the same time, Bazinet would wash out to sea in her house, leaving Trottier the only survivor, who saved herself by grabbing a telephone pole. In multiple media accounts, Broadnax was reported to have been blown out the window into the depths of the ocean.
The obliteration of Saltaire was covered in newspapers as far as the West Coast. Seizing on the tragic press coverage, Robert Moses attempted to resurrect his grandiose extension of Ocean Parkway, which would have leveled all 17 current towns of Fire Island. On September 29, Moses announced his proposed plan to combat the fury of nature through asphalt.
Moses’s beach restoration proposal included hydraulic fill along the oceanfront that would be secured by dredging a boat channel on the bay side of the island, the planting of beach grass to reduce dune erosion, and a 43-mile parkway from Fire Island Inlet to South Hampton. Additional construction in the plan would create four state parks and four toll bridges. The most significant portion of the funds for the project would have been allocated from federal public works grants and state bonds, for a total cost of $15.5 million. Approval of his plan depended on a majority vote from the county town supervisors.
To promote the dangers of Fire Island and gain the essential support of Islip and Brookhaven town supervisors, Moses took them on a tour of storm-ravaged Saltaire to inspect the damage. When asked about Jones Beach’s dunes and the role it played in reducing damage, Moses contended that it was the parkway that had kept the dunes in place.
In rebuttal to Moses’s plan, Suffolk County highway superintendent Hermon Bishop proposed rebuilding dunes using fencing and planting beach grass. The total cost of his beach restoration plan was $1 million.
In a press release related to the alternative plan, Moses said:
“The silly temporary, makeshift brush and fence work now being done with relief and other forces, where the dunes were wiped out along the ocean, will not survive the Ides of March! People are living in a fool’s paradise.”
The outcome of the vote was three supervisors voting for and seven against the Moses proposal. Encapsulating the restoration was the county legislation that prohibited the removal of dunes. Fire Island was saved from development and remained fortified with its dunes. However, Moses would wait for the next tragedy decades later, and the subsequent attempt would result in his resignation from his consolidated power in the New York State government.
