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Hurricane Agnes (June of ‘72): Personal remembrances [1]

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Date: 2023-10-08  

“Don’t go out!” That was the message from my dad.

I remember asking him what he was talking about, phrasing, or perhaps more correctly, framing the question thus: “Why?!” His direct response went something like this:

“I was just out driving and there is water up over car hoods in some places.”

Right away, I thought he was joking. Then I realized he wasn’t. Then my thoughts turned to how this could even be. I was all of 19 at the time. It was the month of June 1972.

The storm, barreled up the U.S. East Coast and just dumped a ton of rain. Baltimore, Maryland, where I was living at the time, was most hard hit. The photos in the local newspaper and on television were telling of the damage that the extreme-weather event inflicted on the city located on the estuary of the Chesapeake Bay.

I was well out of public school at that time. In fact, I had graduated from high school only a year earlier. In fall, this is when I would start my second year in community college.

Parts of Ellicott City, located several miles to Baltimore’s west, were inundated and left in a shambles. The Patapsco River, one of the area’s main water courses affected, meanders through the community.

Back downstream, there’s a park, the McKeldon area of the much larger Patapsco State Park, has a popular attraction: the “Swinging Bridge,” a river-spanning, bouncing-/swaying-as-one-walks-across footbridge. The power that the storm unleashed took a definite toll; after being severely weakened, the bridge itself was ripped from its fastenings. At least a year had passed before the park reopened.

I am not sure how high the ranging waters had gotten, but a sizable length of the former Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s old main line that traverses that area as well, was rendered unusable. To enable its trains to get through, the railroad had a backup plan. It relied on its Relay, Maryland-to-Washington, D.C. line in connection with its D.C.-to-Point of Rocks, Maryland-based corridor, where it rejoins the old main line, as a means to get that job done. Relay, Maryland, incidentally, is the location of transportation company CSX’s famed and historic Thomas Viaduct (as depicted in the photo at top).

Several days after the storm moved off to the north along the eastern seaboard, and things in Baltimore had quieted down, I drove around to check out the damage. To say it was extensive would be to understate conditions just a bit.

I was simply dumbfounded by what I had seen. All low-lying places, even along smaller streams, saw and felt the storm’s fury. It was clear what the power of gushes of water if in large enough measure, could do. You just saw evidence of the hurricane’s power everywhere. Agnes had left her mark. Since hurricanes are named in alphabetical order, invariably this one was the first of the ‘72 season.

Though I am no longer able to recall the thoroughfare’s name, it could have been Sudbrook Road, for all I know, at any rate, the roadway bridge that crossed a brook at the lowest spot had been torn from its support hardware requiring a new bridge to be constructed in its — and in — place. I got to see this with my own two eyes. I seem to recollect that the replacement bridge was just temporary, but, it nonetheless did the job it was intended to do allowing for bike, pedestrian and vehicle passage across. The new bridge substitute is likely what is in place and in service today.

It was the first and only time I ever had the opportunity to get an up-close-and-personal look of the destruction an actual hurricane can inflict. It is my understanding that another powerful storm hit the same general area three years later. When that one stormed through I was no doubt away at undergraduate school because I don’t remember it.

And, now this many years later, I think back to that time when my dad advised me not to go out, I’m thankful I took his advice because, had I not, there’s no telling what might have transpired. I’m glad I listened to my dad.

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