The Hurricane of 1944

In October of 1944, a bad hurricane was traveling up the coast parallel to the shoreline;

the Babbitt family moved to the inside rooms of the second floor of the Flagler Beach Hotel for safety. Mr. Babbitt nailed blankets over the windows to keep any glass from flying in the event that the windows break during the storm. Some fifty-two windows were sucked out after the eye passed over Flagler Beach. Betty Babbitt Johnson remembers when she and her brother Bill were standing in front of the French doors, watching the waves breaking over the pier. She said, “I blinked my eyes—and, all of a sudden, almost half the pier was washed away.”

Water leaked through all four floors in every room with the exception of the room in which the Babbitt family stayed. The storm rolled up the metal roof of the post office and washed up great numbers of shells onto the beach. Many of these were conch shells and the town’s residents gathered them. They placed them in ant beds so the ants would clean the meat out of the shells. The town was littered with tar paper from the roofs of buildings, and there was no electricity for four days. Betty said she remembers that it was sunny and clear the next day, and that they had no bread. The bakery in Daytona had no power either…