The Middy, December 16 1999

What a wild night!

The great gale of 1987 is one historical event in this series most of us will have lived through.

Like John Kennedy's assassination or the first moon landing the word "hurricane "strikes a subliminal chord of memory; we are back in that chilling maelstrom of noise and dark.

The violent storm that changed the face of Mid Sussex had far less impact elsewhere.

British families watched, bemused on the morning of Saturday October 17, as breakfast news reels showed acres of devastation. While Sussex families struggled to make roofs rainproof, clear driveways and cook on Calor Gas, life proceeded normally in the north.

Eyewitness accounts are still extraordinarily vivid, some 12 years on.

People describe the piercing shriek of the wind.

One family heard their loft hatches lift simultaneously and slam down – had they not done so the roof would have been swept away.

Charlie Butcher, five, looked out of his bedroom window and watched lacerated power-cables trail comet-tails of sparks as they whipped back-and-forth across ploughed fields in Hurstpierpoint.

Gina Field, of Wickham Hill watch a stand of fine pine trees toppled quietly like dominoes; one after another.

At its full fury the hot wind had a gritty texture as debris swirled horizontally.

Jenny Davies from Plumpton remembers the shocking struggle into Brighton and seeing St Peter's Church for the first time; the fine stand of mature trees down the Old Steine had been smashed matchwood as the winds funnelled up the A23 Valley.

After the night of violence, people woke to a landscape punctured with unexpected gaps. Light flooded in from strange directions. More than £1 billion of damage was caused nationally; some estates lost 70% of their woodlands and 15 million trees fell that night – half a million in Mid Sussex.

Weeks of rain has softened the soil around roots and early autumn leaf gave trees all the stability of over rigged sailing ships.

The area was devastated – power and telephone lines were cut and emergency services could not find the resources to reconnect them for up to 3 weeks.

The highest authenticated wind speed was logged at 103 mph at Herstmonceux and Dover Coast Guard station; in spite of this the meteorological office said it had not lasted long enough to be classified as a hurricane.

The storm was born when a complex and rapid deepening depression sparked the winds.

Extreme contrasts of warm and cold air over the eastern end of the Atlantic were hit by a 200 mile an hour westerly jetstream.

Meteorologists were criticised for failing to warn people of the potential severity of the storm.

In particular weatherman Michael Fish is now popular on the professional lecture circuit for endlessly repeating his infamous prediction: "there will be no hurricane. "

A report into the disaster commission by the then Defence Secretary George Young said the experts relied too much on inadequate computerised forecasts and should trust their own experience and instinct.

Families went to bed listening to the wind playing around chimney tops with no real sense of foreboding.

Many slept through the storm’s gradual buildup; by the time they woke the wind was in full operatic voice.

Hills, valleys and even tall building strengthened or lessened the impact of gusts.

Many eyewitnesses agree the worst damage was caused when the full fury of the gale hit between 3 and 4 am.

That was when a 125 foot Scots Pine fell through the roof of a bungalow belonging to Alan  and Barbara Goldman in Birchwood Grove Road, Burgess Hill.

At 5 am Jill Mill at the top of Clayton Hill caught fire.

Families living at the bottom of the hill saw sparks trailing from wildly rotating sweeps; it was friction against locked-on brakes which caused the blaze.

Mills Society member Simon Potter from Keymer led a rescue party to stop the sweeps turning and put out the fire.

At High Beeches near Handcross trees were still coming down at 6am as owners Edward and Anne Boscawen watched helplessly.

Nymans lost 80 per cent of its trees, the Hyde Estate at Handcross and Pickwell Estate at Bolney 70 per cent, Newick Park more than 60 per cent, Birch Grove and Wakehurst Place more than half.

Wakehurst’s curator Tony Schilling called the event “Our arboratorial Hiroshima.”

Warninglid’s Lyndhurst Estate lost England’s tallest Pinsapo conifer which had stood at 80 feet.

But the most tragic casualties of the night by far the four people who died either in the storm or as a result of it.

Head gardener of Plumpton Place, Geoffrey Stapleton, 49, died from injuries sustained when a branch hit him across the neck and chest. Mr. Stapleton who had two children was using his chainsaw on a felled yew tree.

Gordon Marsh, 45, from Spilsby, Lincolnshire was killed when a tree fell on him. Mr Marsh was an electricity linesman who- together with thousands of colleagues from across the UK - was deployed in the South East to get power supplies up and running again. He was holding a ladder for a colleague when the accident happened.

Mrs Gaynor Cole, 33, of Balcombe Place died in a head on collision in Borde Hill Lane on the Sunday following the storm.

And pensioner Georgina Wells, 67, received terrible neck and spinal injuries when a tree fell on her bungalow in Penn Crescent, Haywards Heath. She died five days later.

In contrast new life would not wait for the ambulances to get through.

By the time Cuckfield’s emergency team had taken two-and-a-half hours to make the 15 minute journey to Ardingly, baby Petr had been born at home in Smiles Cottage, Ardingly.

When Mum Frances Esposito, 33, went into labour local midwife Margaret Dale, nurse Kirstan Wood and village bobby Terry Edgeler helped at birth.

Blocked roads caused major delays for all emergency services; electricity workers replaced 4,360 wooden poles and even water supplies were threatened by power cuts although reservoir were full. Ninety per cent of Sussex roads were closed.

Police at Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill took more than 1,000 calls for help from 3am onwards.

More than 200 miles of telephone cables were broken . Brityish Telecom appealed for emergency generators to keep exchanges running and pulled in more than 500 staff from Scotland and the West of England.

Power lines were severed; the morning after the storm rural householders paced out a lethal fire-walk as live-voltage cables cracked along the ground under a canopy of broken branches.

The main London to Brighton railway line was blocked by more than 300 trees but fortunately no trains had been running at the height of the gale.

Although the South would take a long time to recover people learned to come to terms with its impact.

As the light filtered through to glades darkened for centuries by dense tree cover Mid Sussex displayed its finest carpets of bluebells and woodland flowers.

New species flourished; estate owners and gardeners made the most of an opportunity to re-shape the landscape.

And many Mid Sussex families revived the spirit of the Blitz to cope with the aftermath.

In country districts drives and roads were blocked; the only access to villages and shops was on foot.

People had no option but to rely on each other for help; families pooled the contents of freezers for impromptu supper parties, shared chain saw labour and popped in to check the well-being of elderly neighbours.

Mid Sussex emerged from the storm with a justified sense of pride; if this beautiful county can weather a hurricane it can cope with anything the world cares to throw at it.