On September 21, 1938, the “Long Island Express” hurricane tore through the South Shore with a ferocity that caught communities off guard, leaving a trail of devastation and stories of survival that would echo for generations. The ocean surged through dunes, homes were swept away, and lives were lost, but the resilience of those who survived painted a vivid picture of human endurance.
Taking a direct hit on Westhampton Beach, the storm’s power was apocalyptic. Approximately 179 dune houses were obliterated, with only a few left standing, uninhabitable. The ocean carved seven new inlets through Fire Island between Cupsogue and the Quogue village line. The Moriches and Potunk Coast Guard Stations were swept away, and iconic landmarks such as the West Bay Bathing Beach (Swordfish Club) and the Quantuck Beach Club were destroyed. The latter’s clubhouse was found a mile north on a Quiogue lawn.
The Westhampton Yacht Basin became a graveyard of sunken and stranded boats, and the south end of the West Bay Bridge was rendered useless. A six-foot wall of water surged down Main Street, carrying debris from the dunes and flooding the first floor of the Six Corners School to nearly five feet. Miraculously, the 200 children inside were dismissed just in time, escaping unharmed.
Louis Green, a plumber working at the Dune Deck Hotel on Dune Road, recounted the storm’s sudden escalation. “It wasn’t really good in the morning… But there was no indication that it was going to be that bad,” he noted. By 2 p.m., the storm’s intensity was undeniable. Green and a colleague tried to secure the hotel, but by 3 p.m., conditions were so dire he couldn’t drive his truck home. It was later found overturned and ruined by saltwater.
Green’s most harrowing moment came when he helped Mrs. Thomas J. Brennan and her maid escape their collapsing home. “I took a piece of the boardwalk from in front of the Dune Deck and put the two women on it, and we started to float across the bay to the mainland,” he recalled. Dodging debris, including a massive fuel tank, they reached safety near Oneck Lane. Exhausted and disoriented, Green couldn’t remember how he made it home to Baycrest Avenue, where his wife and brother-in-law had feared him lost. “When she said that I was upstairs taking a shower, they could hardly believe it!” he said, reflecting on the joy of his survival.
Dorothy Raynor McGonigle, then a high school freshman, described the eerie atmosphere as the storm approached. “High winds, driving rain, and a humid, heavy feel to the atmosphere were not out of the ordinary,” she said, but the situation escalated rapidly. Dismissed from Six Corners School due to shattering windows, her mother drove her home through a maze of fallen trees. Later, she and a friend ventured to the Yacht Basin to secure their sailboats, only to be reprimanded by her father, Cliff Raynor, who recognized the storm’s unprecedented danger. “He had, by then, realized that this was no ordinary storm, and we were all in great danger of being wiped out,” she remembered.
Her father’s tow truck became a lifeline, rescuing people from flooded beach houses. McGonigle joined a caravan fleeing to the Henry Perkins Hotel in Riverhead, where residents anxiously awaited news. “It was frightening not knowing the whereabouts of either Mother or Father!” she said. The next day, she saw Westhampton’s devastation: “Yachts stuck in hedges, buildings broken and twisted, the dunes flattened… It was all but impossible to comprehend.”
In Quogue, the storm was equally merciless. The ocean broke through the dunes at multiple points, creating the 400-foot-wide, 20-foot-deep Quantuck Inlet. The Quantuck Beach Club and nearby houses were swept away, and floodwaters surged nearly a mile north, destroying the Causeway, railroad tracks, and the Quogue Wildlife Refuge. The Church of the Atonement was lifted off its foundation but held fast by trees. The Beach Lane Bridge was demolished, and Ogden’s Pond overflowed, ruining parts of the Field Club golf course. Two young men, Charles Lucas and Tommy Fay, drowned during rescue efforts, and the Quogue Beach Club was half-destroyed.
When the storm hit, Japsie Lockett Sears was at her mother’s Beach Lane home, closing it for winter. “The whole thing to remember is this: we were just taken by surprise,” she said. Fear gripped the household as winds intensified and water surged over their hedge. “We were so scared we couldn’t breathe!” she recalled.
Water poured through the house, carrying vegetables from the kitchen to the stairs. Sears, her mother, young son, and housekeeper fled to the second floor, watching the flood recede just in time. Rescued by Ed Payne in a small rowboat, they were rowed to safety and sheltered at a cottage behind the Quogue House. “The next day we returned to a house full of sand,” she said, encapsulating the storm’s lingering impact.
Samuel B. Cross, working in the Suffolk County Highways office, experienced the storm’s deceptive calm during its eye. “The sun and blue sky appeared,” he said, but the respite was brief. After helping evacuate children from Mechanic’s Hall, he navigated flooded roads to reunite with his wife. “Fred Palmer, Jr. came home and reported that they were picking up bodies on the golf course, and right then and there, we knew that it was much worse than just another bad northeast storm,” he said. The next day, he surveyed the Quantuck Beach Club’s destruction, marveling at a pot of clam chowder still simmering in an undamaged building.
Mrs. Norvin R. Greene, living on Dune Road, faced a life-or-death ordeal with her children and unexpected guests. As waves battered her home, breaking windows and toppling the refrigerator, she sheltered eleven people, including a family with two babies. “We all fled to the second floor,” she said, but the rising water forced them to the attic. “The men smashed part of the roof, so we could see the bay, and have an exit in case the house fell.”
When a neighbor’s roof collapsed into Moriches Bay, Greene feared the worst, but her home’s concrete foundations held. “There’s no doubt these features saved our lives,” she surmised. Cold and terrified, the group survived, though Greene wrestled with the moral dilemma of a single life preserver, which a young girl claimed with the quip, “No, girls first!”
The Long Island Express left Westhampton and Quogue reeling. Twenty-nine people drowned in Westhampton alone, and infrastructure—electricity, telephones, and roads—was crippled. The Patio Building became an emergency headquarters, and the Westhampton Country Club a temporary morgue. In Quogue, the school served as a shelter. The storm’s suddenness, as Japsie
Sears noted, was its defining trait, amplified by the lack of modern forecasting.
Yet, amidst the tragedy, the stories of heroism emerged. The villages rebuilt, but the hurricane’s scars shaped their identity. As Dorothy McGonigle reflected, “For many years afterwards, restoring Westhampton Beach was the main topic of conversation,” a testament to the storm’s enduring legacy and the resilience of those who faced it.