Deadly storm killed nine in Glasgow and destroyed city

“The calendar turning to January always brings back memories, and this one has stayed with me,” says Ian.

“It seemed the window pane was vibrating and rattling against its frame with the rat-a-tat-tat of a pneumatic drill.

“The strength of the wind was so exceptional that I thought I had been wakened by the storm at its height and surely it would shortly blow over. How wrong could I be?

“The terror I was experiencing was the Glasgow Hurricane of 1968.”

A woman picks her way past debris caused by deadly storm Hurricane Low Q in 1968 (Image: Newsquest)

Hurricane Low Q, which raged through Central Scotland in the middle of January 55 years ago, was considered the country’s worst natural disaster at the time, leaving 20 people dead – nine of them in the city – and hundreds homeless.

Winds of more than 100 mph and flooding caused havoc in Glasgow and across Scotland. The Evening Times of January 14, 1968, described it as a "night of terror." Those who died in the city included two mothers and their daughters in Partick, killed when the chimney head from an adjoining building crashed through the roof of their home.

Devastation caused by the Glasgow Hurricane of 1968 (Image: Newsquest)

Falling chimneys and masonry also caused the deaths of a five-year-old girl in Cranstonhill and a pregnant woman in Maryhill, Janet Kua. The Malaysian-born nurse and her husband were asleep in their ground floor bedroom when stonework crashed through the roof and three flats above them. Her husband escaped serious injury when the masonry missed him by inches.

Ian Hutcheson was terrified, he admits, fearing the window would smash under the strength of the wind.

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“Feverishly, I came up with a plan: I would push the wardrobe across the floor and block the gaping hole left by the wrecked window,” he says.

“But how was I to protect our baby daughter sleeping in her room?”

Eventually the wind abated, and Ian fell asleep, wondering when he woke up whether the whole thing had been a “terrifying nightmare”.

He recalls: “Switching on the radio, I heard a reporter say that Glasgow  ‘had taken on the appearance of a bomb-damaged city’ and on the bus into town, I got further confirmation that I had been right to fear the power of the wind. 

“At the foot of the grassy slope beneath the high flats of Kingsway lay two upturned cars, looking like a giant’s discarded toys.

“Through Partick, I saw that the ‘bombs’ responsible for the city’s appearance were the chimney stacks, sent crashing down by the mighty gale, and now lying as mere heaps of rubble on the pavements and side streets; and they had done some real damage. The chimney stack of a four-storey building had fallen through the roof its neighbour.”

Ian says Glaswegians gradually learned the details of what had happened throughout the day.

“What we thought had been a gale had recorded a speed of 125mph which earned it the status of a hurricane,” he explains.

Shop owners in Garry Street/Holmlea Road, Glasgow, begin a clean-up operation in the aftermath of Hurricane Low Q, which caused at least 20 deaths and widespread destruction across the central belt in January 1968. (Image: Newsquest)

“And then there was the shock news of fatalities, including four at the damaged building in Partick I had passed in the morning. 

“Friends living in a corner tenement on Crow Road, where the extensive skylight above the stair was destroyed and the power of the wind had created a freak vortex in the stair well, found themselves and their fellow residents trapped in their flats, unable to open their doors. 

A worker inspects roof damage in Thornwood Place (Image: Newsquest)

“In the days that followed, the story of the hurricane that hit Glasgow was written across the devastated rooftops of the city, where a patchwork of tarpaulins was laid to give its citizens temporary shelter from the elements; and soon an army of roofers would work their way across the city to make good the damage.”

In retrospect, says Ian, the hurricane was “an ill wind”. 

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“Once the massive repair effort had been completed, the city’s long neglected housing stock was now in better condition than it had been for decades, so no more would citizens lie awake on stormy nights, their minds tortured by the logistics of repositioning wardrobes,” he says.

“You can still see the legacy of the destruction wrought by the hurricane. If you run your eye along the roof top of many a Glasgow tenement building, you will see chimney stacks that were repaired or rebuilt using brick or concrete instead of sandstone, some of them stunted versions of their former selves.”

Do you recall the Glasgow Hurricane? Get in touch with Times Past by emailing ann.fotheringham@glasgowtimes.co.uk or write to Ann Fotheringham, Glasgow Times, 125 Fullarton Drive, Glasgow G32 8FG