Headlines and stories from the San Pedro News-Pilot in September 1939 chronicled, in real time, the devastation that unfolded the last time a tropical storm made landfall — that time near Long Beach.
“Storm Victim Found at Cabrillo Beach.”
“Furious Storm Wrecks Beach Homes.”
“C.G. Still Hunting 34 Boats – Southland Storm Toll Rises, Coast and Island Coves Searched for Unreported Craft.”
With Southern California under a tropical storm watch, let’s take a look back at the last time such a torrent actually made landfall in the region.
By the time that storm was over, the breakwater and bathhouse in San Pedro were damaged and 93 deaths were reported across Southern California. Forty-five of those died in flooding on land and another 48 were lost at sea. The property damage totaled in the millions of dollars.
Numerous stories posted on The California Digital Newspaper Collection website tell the story of the devastation from that tropical storm, nicknamed El Cordonazo, or The Lash of St. Francis.
One Sept. 27, 1939, an opinion column from the now-defunct San Pedro paper started this way:
“First it was the war. Then the heat. Then the storm. The storm, a big local story, took the play away from the European fighting. As a matter of fact, news emanating from the European war front Monday and Tuesday was secondary stuff, as metropolitan dailies devoted page after page to pictures and news stories of the storm.”
A San Diego Union Tribute report described it this way:
“Whistling winds and driving rain of a tropical storm which disrupted wire utilities, halted Santa Fe trains service at San Clemente, started run-off into reservoirs and piled debris in streets and alleys, died to a murmur last night after a new September wind record was set.”
It was, the article said, “the worst September windstorm in San Diego’s history.”
The possible storm coming this way over the weekend remains somewhat unpredictable — but is expected to bring…
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