The white hurricane left devastation and death

(Con­tin­ued from last week)

The front page of The Belle­vue Gazette from Jan. 27–28, 1978, the day of the “great bliz­zard of 78” gave this vivid descrip­tion of the storm:

“The worst bliz­zard in mem­ory of most has stunned Belle­vue and North­west Ohio with its destruc­tive fury. The area is just begin­ning to dig out from under the coat­ing of snow and ice that brought trans­porta­tion to a stand­still, left many homes with­out power and heat for days, and caused the deaths of eight peo­ple in the area.

It started in the early hours of Thurs­day morn­ing with weird light­ning and rain. The wind picked up and the rain quickly turned to snow as the tem­per­a­ture plum­meted. For a while before dawn, the dri­ving snow was illu­mi­nated by the lightning.

By day­break, it was impos­si­ble to see more than a few feet ahead and one life had already been lost. The snow and wind just kept on com­ing, seal­ing Belle­vue off from the rest of the world.

Emer­gency shel­ters were set up for peo­ple dri­ven from their homes because of the lack of heat. Many res­i­dents with heat in their homes took in neigh­bors who had none.

Red Cross per­son­nel and com­mu­nity vol­un­teers set up cots and served food as safety forces brought peo­ple from their homes to the shelters.

Sev­eral restau­rants were pro­vid­ing food free to dis­placed Bellevueans.

By Fri­day morn­ing drifts as high as 12 feet were seal­ing off the high­ways out­side of town. But the wind had died down a bit mak­ing it pos­si­ble for heavy equip­ment crews to begin push­ing the snow aside so more stranded peo­ple could be brought to shelter.”

The Belle­vue Gazette pub­lished two papers in one issue as res­i­dents remained housed in spe­cial shel­ters. Most of Belle­vue was still with­out power. The schools had missed a total of 13 days due to weather con­di­tions, eight over the limit allowed by the state.

For many years res­i­dents recalled their own expe­ri­ences of those fate­ful days, shud­der­ing as they remem­bered the chill­ing winds, the blast­ing snow which never stopped blow­ing, the huge drifts, the numb­ing cold and loss of elec­tric power and often of heat, and the feel­ing of help­less­ness as they real­ized how quickly the area could become paralyzed.

When the storm dimin­ished on Fri­day after­noon, it left in its wake eight vic­tims in this area, includ­ing three in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of Bellevue.

There pos­si­bly could have been more but for peo­ple help­ing peo­ple. Elec­tric power which started going out early Thurs­day morn­ing left many peo­ple with­out heat. Over 600 peo­ple were evac­u­ated and brought to shel­ters set up at the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion School, the Indus­trial Sav­ings and Loan, and the Eagles Club.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.