The Great Storm of 62

[Bass Man]

Why start another thread on a topic that already has a thread of its Own? Thought this was frowned upon.

I stumbled across this by accident and found it fascinating as I didn't even know this had happened at all!

I found it very educational and will now look into it further and will tell my kids about it as well so they are aware of an important part of Sheffields history.

Obviously the moderators have common sense when dealing with situations like this.

[jmdee]

My memories of this are as follows:

 

The sky, the preceding evening was a very unusual pink colour. I was working overtime, at Wigfalls in the T.V. service department, and had a view of this through the window alongside my bench. During the early morning hours, I was awakened by the wind, and the sound of dustbin lids, and other articles rolling around in the street outside our house. We lived in the New Parson Cross area of town, which was relatively untouched, in relation to the rest of the city.

 

Next morning, the wind had dropped, and the worst I could see, were a few slates and miscellaneous pieces of debris in the street, along with a few T.V. aerials lying down on the roofs on houses nearby. The news was of course, full of the unfortunate people that had suffered injuries, or worse, houses damaged, and the effect on the bungalows, some of which had been totally destroyed.

 

The next day at Wiggies, we were asked for volounteers to form crews to re-install the T.V. antennas that had been blown down. Along with others, I offered to help, and this provided a good source of income, as we were paid by the job, (about 10/- per, I think) and this carried on for six weeks before the work had been completed enough to allow Wiggies own antenna contractors to manage on their own. It seemed to me, the worst affected areas in general seemed to be Pitsmoor and Fir Vale. In these districts, we could climb uponto one end of a terraced row, and just walk along reinstalling the aerials as we went, and do up to 10 or 20 before having to get down off the roof. Must have cleared 500 quid over the six weeks, sure better than the 12 pounds a week I was earning

 

 

QUOTE=cat631;1188646]Does anyone have any memories or experiences of the storm that hit Sheffield on the night of 16th February 1962?

I went to work the next day as an apprentice electrician employed on the construction of the new Pond Street College. The tower crane was laid across the half constructed building and its counterweights had been caterpulted into the bus station. All the scaffolding was peeled from the structure like a banana skin.