BBC weatherman Michael Fish is still haunted by his famous forecast where he reassured a woman viewer who had called from Hastings worried about a hurricane sweeping in from the North Atlantic onto the South Coast, on the night of October 15, 1987.
His claim 30 years ago that the storm would never be that fierce came just hours before the Great Storm laid waste to parks and forests across the south east of England.
The overnight storm caused more than £1billion of damage all told as roofs and temporary or unsubstantial structures were swept away by the kind of gusts of wind more associated with tornados in America.
Surrey and Hampshire suffered while parts of West Sussex’s landscape – such as the National Trust’s Petworth estate (as The Herald reported last week) – were decimated with thousands of trees uprooted.
Many more blocked rural and urban roads, including scores that crashed down on to neighbouring properties, with dozens of vehicles crushed underneath.
John Barton – from Grove Road, Beacon Hill – was one of 18 people who died that day in the UK as people woke up to discover horrendous damage in the country’s worst storm since 1703 with winds reaching at least 115mph in Shoreham in Sussex.
Hundreds of thousands of homes were left without power and even water, forcing schools to close for a long weekend. Many properties around Liphook and the village surrounding Haslemere were still without electricity a week later.
Southern Electric was forced to summon an army of engineers from all over the country to the south to repair power lines and pylons, many of which were brought down and tangled among the debris from the trees, also cutting off many phone lines.
The gas main in Beacon Hill was ruptured during the disruption making it almost impossible for residents to warm up food or make hot drinks.
Mr Barton’s body was found in his Ford Capri under a tree on the B2146 between Petersfield and Chichester by workers clearing the blocked road.
Fortunately there were no more fatalities although many people had lucky escapes including the pensioners Charlie and Vera Cousins, in Sun Vale, Haslemere, whose bungalow was hit by a falling tree, which crashed through their bedroom ceiling as they slept.
The branches also broke through the bedroom windows of the house next door belonging to the Mills family. Three girls were asleep in one of the rooms which was showered in broken glass but luckily all four children and their parents were unharmed but badly shaken before going to their neighbour’s rescue.
A newly-built bungalow in Hedgehog Lane was also damaged but was unoccupied at the time. Another bungalow was damaged in Chiddingfold, and huge gaps appeared along Prestwick Lane and Dunsfold Road, as whole rows of trees toppled over.
A pony was found dead after its stables were crushed near Haslemere’s Mill Tavern, while 65 cats housed at the town’s cat rescue centre in Woolmer Hill used up many of their nine lives as their pens were smashed by falling trees – but the fortunate felines all escaped intact.
Caring for the many frail and elderly patients at Haslemere Hospital and Shottermill’s Holy Cross proved a real challenge for the NHS as generators were needed to provide emergency power supplies – the disruption to the local road network meant nurses and doctors struggled to get to work.
Over the weekend long queues formed in Haslemere High Street as people shopped by candlelight with all the electric tills on the blink.
Life was just as tough in the rural areas – village stores did a roaring trade as people stocked up on food and drinks and basic supplies – Coytes hardware store in Liphook quickly sold out of batteries, candles and gas bottles, while the nearby Gateway supermarket had to close because of the power cuts.
Radford Park had been undergoing a major renovation with a recently completed bridge over the River Wey within a few feet of being struck by a huge tree that came down.
Others landed in the park’s two ponds leaving the scores of volunteers who had helped transform it with a huge workload to restore it again.