By State › Rhode Island

Rhode Island: Overview

Download all of Rhode Island as PDF Print

Everything in the main manual and the skill guides applies in Rhode Island exactly as written. What’s different here is the specific hazard profile and the state, local, and legal context around it. This page is the starting point; the other three pages under Rhode Island go deeper on laws, local resources, and the data behind the risks named here.

The Hurricane of 1938: downtown Providence under 13 feet of water

On September 21, 1938, a hurricane that struck with almost no warning devastated Rhode Island. Connecticut and New Hampshire’s pages on this site cover the storm’s broader Southern New England death toll; in Rhode Island specifically, an estimated 229 people died. Providence recorded sustained winds of 100 mph, gusting to 125, and a storm surge rushed into the harbor and submerged downtown Providence under more than 13 feet of water. Narragansett Bay took the worst of the surge, 12-15 feet, destroying most coastal homes, marinas, and yacht clubs, and in Jamestown, seven children died when their school bus was blown into Mackerel Cove. See the Risks page for the full data.

The March 2010 floods: the worst in 200-plus years

Over three days in late March 2010, Rhode Island received nearly 16 inches of rain, a rainfall total classified as a 1-in-100-year event, producing what officials called the worst flooding the state had seen in more than two centuries. The Pawtuxet River crested 13 feet above flood stage, and the Warwick and Rhode Island malls sat partially submerged for days. Remarkably, the flooding itself caused no direct deaths, though one indirect traffic fatality occurred during the storm. See the Risks page for the full data.

What this means for how you use the rest of this manual

The manual’s Tier structure and the skill guides apply without modification. What’s different in Rhode Island: coastal storm surge here has a documented history of submerging an entire downtown, not just low-lying edges, so evacuation planning for Providence and Narragansett Bay communities should account for that scale, and the 2010 flood shows that a state this size can absorb a historic, multi-day rain event with strong emergency response and still avoid a mass-casualty outcome, a genuine success story worth noting alongside the manual’s warning-and-evacuation guidance.

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