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History > Crossroad Communities > When Disaster Strikes

WHEN DISASTER STRIKES
Marylanders rightly regard themselves as relatively removed from nature's worst disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, fierce electrical storms, tornadoes, and devastating droughts. Yet excepting earthquakes, each occasionally strikes, seldom catastrophically but often severely enough to refresh our gratitude for their infrequency. By far the most costly disaster is the scourge of fire, sometimes caused by lightning, sometimes by spontaneous combustion, often by human carelessness and sometimes by arson. These scenes give a sampling of Sandy Spring's brushes with the hard hand of nature and arrant man.
Four tFour times in 30 years the Patuxent River leaped its banks and flooded the valley home of Mason and Lydia Haviland on Haviland Mill Road. Here Charlotte and Phyllis Haviland wade in the lawn during a 1956 deluge. Tropical storm Agnes hit hardest, in 1972, when water swirled 19 inches above the second floor. From their refuge in the upstairs bedroom, Mason and Lydia tucked the family cat in a styrofoam picnic cooler, launched it and themselves from a bedroom window, and swam with the cooler to high ground. imes in
Tom Lansdale's Sherwood Mill burns to the ground on an April Sunday in 1966--a scene watched by hundreds of churchgoers. The structure had been built by his father Richard H. Lansdale II in 1921. The cause of the fire was not determined. Fire crews from Hillandale and Kensington struggled vainly beside Sandy Spring firemen to combat the blaze. Lansdale rebuilt and continued milling into the 1980s.
Four times in 30 years the Patuxent River leaped its banks and flooded the valley home of Mason and Lydia Haviland on Haviland Mill Road. Here Charlotte and Phyllis Haviland wade in the lawn during a 1956 deluge. Tropical storm Agnes hit hardest, in 1972, when water swirled 19 inches above the second floor. From their refuge in the upstairs bedroom, Mason and Lydia tucked the family cat in a styrofoam picnic cooler, launched it and themselves from a bedroom window, and swam with the cooler to high ground. Tom Lansdale's Sherwood Mill burns to the ground on an April Sunday in 1966--a scene watched by hundreds of churchgoers. The structure had been built by his father Richard H. Lansdale II in 1921. The cause of the fire was not determined. Fire crews from Hillandale and Kensington struggled vainly beside Sandy Spring firemen to combat the blaze. Lansdale rebuilt and continued milling into the 1980s.
As if caught in an endless kluge, the Thomas family threads the old Colesville Pike (New Hampshire Avenue) during the dreadful blizzard of February 1899. Lacking long-range weather forecasts, Sandy Springers had welcomed the first foot of snow: "sleigh bells jingled merrily through the falling flakes," noted the Annals. Then came ten more days of relentless snow, wind, and arctic cold that buried fences and "struck the oldest inhabitants speechless." Mountainous drifts lingered on the landscape until April 15. It struck on a May evening of 1929--a vicious tornado that splintered the large house and barn of John William Benson on Zion Road. The twister destroyed the houses and barns of Charles Haight on Howard Chapel Road, smashed into William Royer's farm, and lifted the upper floors of the Burroughs home at present Camp Waradaca without harming the terrified family below. By that time it had claimed one life. It touched down again on the Childs' home at the corner of Route 108 and Muncaster Road. Destroying the house, it killed a young sister and brother and their grandmother. For months afterward northern Sandy Spring was strewn with uprooted trees and the boards and tin of shattered buildings.
As if caught in an endless kluge, the Thomas family threads the old Colesville Pike (New Hampshire Avenue) during the dreadful blizzard of February 1899. Lacking long-range weather forecasts, Sandy Springers had welcomed the first foot of snow: "sleigh bells jingled merrily through the falling flakes," noted the Annals. Then came ten more days of relentless snow, wind, and arctic cold that buried fences and "struck the oldest inhabitants speechless." Mountainous drifts lingered on the landscape until April 15. It struck on a May evening of 1929--a vicious tornado that splintered the large house and barn of John William Benson on Zion Road. The twister destroyed the houses and barns of Charles Haight on Howard Chapel Road, smashed into William Royer's farm, and lifted the upper floors of the Burroughs home at present Camp Waradaca without harming the terrified family below. By that time it had claimed one life. It touched down again on the Childs' home at the corner of Route 108 and Muncaster Road. Destroying the house, it killed a young sister and brother and their grandmother. For months afterward northern Sandy Spring was strewn with uprooted trees and the boards and tin of shattered buildings.
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