Looking Back

By James Rada, Jr.

A Wind-Blown Frederick County

It could have been an April Fool’s Day joke, albeit a bad one, that Mother Nature played on the region in 1975, except it was a few days late. On April 3, the wind started blowing, and it blew hard. The Frederick Airport measured sustained winds of 60 mph with gusts up to 100 mph.

On the Brauer Farm, north of Thurmont, Charles Brauer and his son were in the barn grinding feed. Mrs. Brauer was in the kitchen. She looked out the window when she heard the wind blowing and the wood creaking.

“Our whole lifetime’s work blew away in two minutes,” she said. “The whole barn began to sway, and the wind just lifted it up and set it back down again.”

The Brauers were all right, but the barn eventually collapsed.

For most of Thursday and half of Friday, the winds blew, wreaking havoc. Had there been rain, it would have been considered a Category 1 or 2 hurricane. At least in Frederick County, the winds just created a wind chill of -12 degrees.

Frederick City, Thurmont, and Emmitsburg were considered the hardest-hit areas of the county.

Along U.S. 15, the winds blew down billboards. The highway was closed completely for several hours as emergency crews dealt with at least three tractor-trailers that were toppled on the highway because of the wind. Other county roads had more than their share of accidents as trees and power lines were downed.

Betty and Luther Hargett were in their pickup truck at an intersection in Frederick City when downed electric lines hit a school bus stopped behind them. “The instant they hit, fire and sparks were flying everywhere,” Betty told The (Frederick) News.

The Thurmont American Legion, which lost its awning in the storm, opened to house stranded travelers when U.S. 15 was closed. More than 70 people wound up staying there.

Thurmont Mayor James Black said, “It was the worst storm that I know of since I’ve lived in Thurmont, 28 years, and the worst that older residents can recall.” One letter writer to the newspaper would later compare the storm to a 1926 hurricane he experienced while in Florida.

Black spent Thursday night in the town office fielding calls and visits from residents who were reporting problems and asking for information. He estimated the damage to the town would run into “several hundred thousand dollars.”

He also instituted a curfew in Thurmont that began at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday and lasted until noon on Friday. Only people traveling to and from work or school by vehicle were allowed on the street. Walkers at Thurmont schools were driven home on the bus “because of the danger of flying debris, dangling power lines and falling trees and utility poles,” according to The News. Similar precautions were taken in Emmitsburg.

Among other damage in Thurmont: Weller’s United Methodist Church lost half its roof. The Elmer Bollinger barn was destroyed. Wind blew the porch off the Creager Furniture Store. The Shamrock Restaurant’s chimney toppled and fell through the roof into the main dining room. Catoctin Mountain Zoo lost power, which presented a safety hazard to some of the animals, including the fish in the aquarium that were dying from lack of oxygen in the water.

Thurmont Police Chief Herman Shook was also injured when the winds lifted him up off the ground and slammed him down.

In Emmitsburg, at least a dozen buildings were damaged, including the town hotel, St. Joseph’s Church, and the old St. Euphemia’s school.

“The roof of the church just isn’t there anymore,” Emmitsburg Mayor Richard Sprankle said. “We always thought those mountains around us would protect us from this sort of thing, but they didn’t this time.”

Elsewhere around the county, the Frederick County Board of Education building had $30,000 in damage. Schools in Myersville, Wolfsville, and Lewistown were closed because they had no power. Frederick High School lost a portion of its roof, estimated at $20,000. Frederick Community College closed for a few days because three buildings suffered extensive roof damage. Winchester Hall lost part of its roof in Frederick City. Chimneys were toppled and exterior staircases fell. Windows were shattered either from the force of the wind or from debris being thrown into them.

“City residents said the wind storm may have been the worst in the city’s history,” The News reported.

At one point, 30,000 buildings were without power in the county, and 75 telephone poles were knocked down.

“Throughout the county, trees were uprooted, telephone poles leveled, roofs ripped from buildings, barns and other structures toppled. County officials would not estimate the damage county-wide,” The News reported.

“The wind blew in and it blew out,” The News reported on April 5. “And now the people of Frederick County must pull together to clean up the littered battlefield.”

As residents began assessing the damage and cleaning up, local businesses ran ads tying into the storm, advertising axes, chainsaws, and other items that might be needed. One man even ran an ad for days after the storm offering a reward if anyone could find his hat and return it to him.

Despite all this, Frederick County was lucky. Washington County had one person killed when his truck turned over in the storm, and three more were killed in other areas of Maryland and Washington, D.C. In Chicago, the winds came with 19 inches of snow that resulted in the death of 47 people. In Somerset County, Pennsylvania, 1,500 people were left stranded when the Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed.

“Even three days later, the wind still growls ominously as if to remind us that our normally placid weather behaves [badly] on occasion [like it does] in Florida, California and elsewhere,” The News reported.