Bristol, RI Hurricane & Storm Risk: What the Town's Own Record Actually Shows

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938: Bristol's Own Documented Record

The single most damaging storm in Bristol's modern record is the Great New England Hurricane of Wednesday, September 21, 1938 (the Town of Bristol's own historical account of the storm dates the worst local damage to September 23). Per the town's own published article on the storm, Bristol recorded sustained winds of 76 miles per hour and a tidal wave that rose roughly 15 feet above the normal high-water mark, causing more than $1 million in property damage -- with no deaths recorded in Bristol itself. That is a real, town-sourced figure, not a generic regional estimate, and it is worth holding onto as the baseline for everything else on this page.

The damage was concentrated on the working waterfront and in low-lying residential pockets. The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company and the Collins and Aikman Corporation each reported losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars; the Herreshoff yard's own historical archive adds that the South Construction Shop lost roughly half its structure and that yachts awaiting winter haul-out were "scattered in all directions, many of them very seriously damaged." The Bristol Yacht Club was destroyed outright, the ferry boat Prudence was beached at the Seth Paull Company dock, a 90-foot yacht named Firenze was swept across a road, the State Armory had a large gap torn in its side, and the State Street Methodist Church's steeple -- with a 1,600-pound bell inside -- crashed through the church roof. The Lobster Pot restaurant was a total loss, valued at about $5,000, and the Franklin Street railroad station was nearly destroyed.

Residential damage was just as specific: William W. Perry's house on Silver Creek took on 15 feet of water inside, and Perry himself nearly drowned when a door gave way beneath him, staying afloat by clinging to the building's exterior for roughly three hours before rescue; Archie Wiljer's house was torn from its foundation; and multiple summer cottages at Bristol Narrows collapsed, along with the public bathhouse at Town Beach. Water, electric, and gas service were all cut off town-wide, and most streets were blocked by fallen trees. Six people drowned nearby on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay when a house was ripped from its foundation -- a real and tragic loss, but one that occurred in the Town of Portsmouth, RI, which governs Prudence Island, not in Bristol itself; the two should not be conflated into a single town's death toll. In the storm's aftermath, Bristol resident Charles B. Rockwell donated waterfront land -- a former inn and industrial property -- to the town, which became today's Rockwell Park at 201 Thames Street, home to the historical marker this page draws on for the 1938 and 1954 accounts below.

Hurricane Carol, August 31, 1954: A Statewide Catastrophe, and Two Named Bristol Losses

Hurricane Carol made landfall in Rhode Island on August 31, 1954, and remains one of the deadliest storms in the state's history: at least 17 deaths statewide, roughly $200 million in damage, 620 houses and 83 other buildings destroyed, and a storm surge in Narragansett Bay reaching up to 14.4 feet -- higher than the 1938 storm's surge. Providence's downtown flooded under 12 feet of water, with reports of the water rising 4 feet in about an hour; Westerly lost roughly 200 homes; and 95 percent of the state's phone service went down. Those are statewide Rhode Island figures, not Bristol-specific ones, and this page presents them as such rather than implying Bristol individually absorbed a share of that damage that has not been separately documented.

For Bristol specifically, the Rockwell Park historical marker records that Hurricane Carol caused the total destruction of the Lobster Claw restaurant on the Bristol waterfront. (Note the marker names the "Lobster Claw" for Carol's 1954 damage, distinct from the "Lobster Pot" recorded as a 1938 loss in the town's own separate hurricane article -- this page treats them as two different named establishments rather than assuming one source made an error, since neither account was independently cross-verified against the other in this research pass.) Beyond that one named loss, no additional Bristol-specific street-by-street account of Carol's damage -- comparable in detail to the town's own 1938 record -- was located in this research; a more exhaustive local-newspaper search (the Bristol Phoenix's own archives, or the Bristol Historical & Preservation Society) would be the next step for anyone wanting a fuller picture.

What's Missing: No Bristol-Specific Data for Hurricane Bob (1991) or Sandy (2012)

It would be easy, and dishonest, to assume that because 1938 and Carol are so specifically documented for Bristol, the more recent storms must be too. They are not, at least not in what this research turned up. Hurricane Bob made landfall in Rhode Island on August 19, 1991, and caused real, well-documented damage across the state's coast -- but no Bristol-specific damage account, dollar figure, or named-street effect was found for Bristol in this pass. A 2011 Bristol-Warren Patch retrospective on Bob's 20th anniversary asked local residents to share their own memories rather than reporting documented figures itself, which is itself a sign that a readily citable, official Bristol-specific record for that storm may not exist in an easily searchable form.

The same gap applies to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which caused major, well-documented damage elsewhere in the Northeast (notably New York and New Jersey) as a hybrid post-tropical storm by the time it reached southern New England. No Bristol-specific flood depth, damage figure, or named-location account for Sandy was found in this research. An absence of a documented Bristol-specific figure is not evidence Bristol was spared either storm -- given the town's exposure in 1938 and its low-lying waterfront, some effect from both Bob and Sandy is plausible -- but plausible inference is not a sourced figure, and this page will not present one as fact.

Silver Creek, Then and Now: A 1938 Near-Drowning and a Present-Day Vulnerability Score

One thread connects Bristol's worst historical storm to its current infrastructure planning: Silver Creek. In 1938, William Perry's house on Silver Creek took on 15 feet of water and very nearly cost him his life. Today, per Rhode Island's own statewide sea-level-rise and storm-surge transportation fact sheet for Bristol (built on STORMTOOLS data from the Coastal Resources Management Council and the University of Rhode Island), the Silver Creek bridge on Route 114 -- Hope Street -- is identified as Bristol's single most critical bridge for coastal flood exposure: at 7 feet of sea-level rise, its freeboard is already calculated at negative 20 inches, and under a combined 7-foot sea-level-rise-plus-100-year-storm-surge scenario, that figure falls to negative 185 inches. The same report ranks Bristol 4th among Rhode Island municipalities for bridge vulnerability to sea-level rise and 9th for storm-surge vulnerability, and separately ranks Hope Street itself as Bristol's single most vulnerable road, with roughly 7 miles of town roadway (4 of them local roads) exposed at 7 feet of sea-level rise, rising to about 19 miles under a combined storm-surge scenario. The state's own report notes the Mount Hope Bridge itself was not included in that particular freeboard dataset and flags it as needing separate investigation -- a real, disclosed gap, not an oversight this page is inventing.

That is not a coincidence of geography so much as a reminder that the same low ground that flooded in 1938 is the same low ground state engineers are modeling today. It is also a useful, concrete reason not to treat "Bristol hurricane risk" as an abstract category: a specific bridge on a specific road, on the same creek where a specific homeowner nearly drowned 87 years ago, carries a specific, numeric, currently-published vulnerability score.

Bristol's Current Flood and Stormwater Investment (2025-2026)

Separate from hurricane history, Bristol is currently spending real, borrowed money on flood and stormwater infrastructure. In January 2026, the town secured a $788,000 loan from the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, drawn through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, for stormwater and wastewater infrastructure design work, composting-facility planning, and removal of an aging shoreline pipe -- explicitly framed by the town's community development director, Diane Williamson, as a response to heavier rainstorms and inland flooding tied to climate change. That followed an earlier $2.8 million Infrastructure Bank loan in August 2025 for road work and a separate $461,000 grant for waterfront parking improvements. This is not marketing language; it is a town borrowing and spending money, on a recent and dated basis, specifically because of flood and stormwater concerns.

Bristol also participates in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program and, per the town's own Flood Zone Information page, has achieved Class 7 status in FEMA's Community Rating System, which the town states results in reduced flood-insurance premiums for Bristol policyholders. That same town page names both the 1938 hurricane and a separate 1869 storm it calls "the 1869 Hurricane" as historically significant local flood events; this research could not independently confirm further Bristol-specific detail on the 1869 event (a large hurricane did affect the wider region that year, but a direct, sourced Bristol account of it was not located here), so it is disclosed as a named gap rather than filled in with invented detail.

Who Actually Handles This Today, and Practical Steps Before You Buy

Unlike some New England waterfront markets split across multiple towns or fire districts, Bristol is a single town with its own government and its own fire department, which simplifies who to call. Michael DeMello serves as both Bristol's Fire Chief and its Emergency Management Director, with the Emergency Management office at 4 Annawamscutt Drive; Steven Contente serves as Bristol's Town Administrator. The town publishes its own evacuation map and directs residents to CodeRED and "Notify Me" alert systems, the Quinta-Gamelin Community Center (101 Asylum Road) as its emergency shelter, and FEMA's Map Service Center (msc.fema.gov) for a current, address-specific flood-zone determination -- something this page does not attempt to assign to any individual Bristol parcel.

Before buying waterfront or near-waterfront property in Bristol, pull the current FEMA flood-zone designation for the specific parcel directly from msc.fema.gov, ask the town's Community Development office (401-253-7000 ext. 126) whether an Elevation Certificate exists for the property, and get a written flood-insurance quote from a Rhode Island-licensed agent rather than assuming Class 7 CRS status translates to a specific discount for that address. And treat the Silver Creek/Hope Street vulnerability data above as a reason to ask pointed questions about a specific property's elevation and drainage, not as a verdict on the whole town -- Bristol is a peninsula with real, uneven low-ground exposure, not a uniformly at-risk market. Nothing on this page substitutes for official guidance from the Town of Bristol, FEMA, or the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA).