The Hurricane That Struck Gilgo Beach

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

IT STRUCK without warning 62 years ago, a lightning-fast killer hurricane the like of which had rarely been experienced in Long Island history. Packing winds thought to have topped 125 mph, it submerged streets and ripped up houses, tore off church steeples and gouged out new canals and inlets.

The full fury of the hurricane of Sept. 21, 1938, crashed on the East End's South Shore, where 15-foot-high breakers pulled vacation homes into the sea. Of the storm's 50 fatalities, 29 occurred at or near Westhampton Beach. But Long Island's western beaches were not spared.

These photos show the destruction to homes and vehicles in the Gilgo Beach area of Babylon, where Judy Masino's family had a summer house. Masino, who found them in her parents' family album, was 3 and safe in their Farmingdale home at the time. Their house near the ocean survived, but after the storm the houses that remained were moved to the bayside. The ocean beaches were added to Gilgo Beach State Park.

The family continued to journey in her grandfather's cabin cruiser to the two-story vacation house that stood on stilts and had no indoor plumbing, Masino recalls. Later owners replaced it with a more contemporary structure. She doesn't know what happened to the outhouse.