IT’S NEARLY midnight on Thursday, January 24, 2025. Sixty years ago this month, West Dunbartonshire was reeling from the aftermath of ‘Scotland’s deadliest storm’ which took the life of a young father-to-be from Alexandria and left multiple families homeless.
I was there, out in a storm similar to Storm Éowyn which is the one Dumbarton, Vale of Leven and Helensburgh is facing today, a young news agency reporter with a notebook and pen in a blue Hillman Imp which I eventually had to abandon with two tyres ripped open by smashed glass, rubble and slates thrown on to the streets by the storm.
The car, which had its engine at the rear and an empty boot up front, was caught by the wind and reared up like a horse in a cowboy movie as I tried to negotiate the road back to the West End through the howling gale and lashing rain across the old bridge over the River Leven. I had to complete the rest of my dangerous assignment on foot.
Tara Fitzpatrick, pictured left, who is now a reporter with STV News in Glasgow, did an excellent piece in 2018 recalling the events of that memorable night when a baby girl had a miracle escape from the rubble of a collapsed council tenement as the horror hurricane tore through Dumbarton and the Vale in the early hours of Monday, January 15, 1968.
The Lennox Herald reported that Hugh Timoney was killed as he braved the gale to rush his young wife to a maternity hospital in the middle of the night.
Hugh Timoney, 24, a salesman, and his wife Evelyn, were travelling from their home in Bridge Street, Alexandria, to a temporary maternity unit in Duntocher when their car ploughed into a giant tree which had blown across the road in Main Street, Bonhill.
After treating her injuries, doctors decided to transfer Mrs Timoney, who was also 24, to Braeholm Maternity hospital in Helensburgh, but ambulances making the nine-mile mercy dash were forced to turn back because of fallen trees.tled back to Vale of Leven Hospital at the height of the gale in time for the birth.
Mrs Timoney gave birth to a baby boy named Andrew, the couple’s second child.
Also on that fateful night, storms forced 17 families from Dumbarton to evacuate their houses and also left 30 families homeless at Haldane in Balloch.
Roads across the area were littered with uprooted trees, doors were ripped from telephone kiosks, garden huts appeared in the wrong gardens, and boats on the River Leven and Loch Lomond were torn from the moorings.
The churches in the county were also destroyed, including Rev Bill Kenny’s St Andrew’s Church in Bellsmyre which had the roof lifted off and dropped in pieces about 40 yards away.
A baby from Castlehill had a miracle escape when a giant chimney head crashed into her pram and drove it through the floor of a top-storey flat.
The accident hppened at Cumbrae Crescent South, where families from two tenements were evacuated at the height of the storm.
Four-month-old Isobel Hunter was sleeping soundly near her parent’s bed at number 50 when tons of rubble crashed through the ceiling.
Her parents, Ian Hunter, 29, and his wife Margaret, 30, struggled from their bed and got their other child, two-year-old Billy, out of his cot and carried him to safety.
The two other children – Margaret, 10, and six-year-old Alan – who were sleeping in another room, escaped unhurt. The family are pictured here.
But baby Isobel could not be found. The distraught couple dug into the rubble with their bare hands as police, fire brigade and ambulances raced to the scene.
A police officer later said: “When we got the house only a handle of this pram could be seen. The rescue team worked furiously for almost an hour before they found the trapped child, after hearing her whimper. Isobel’s only reaction to the drama was to yawn… she escaped without a scratch.”
Three weeks after the fatal storm, Vale of Leven District Council launched The Storm Damage Fund to provide vital aid to the families affected. The fund remained open until the end of February 1968.
People share their memories of the Great Storm
John Taylor was nine-years-old and a pupil at Dalreoch Primary School in Castlehill in 1968 when the storm caused havoc across West Dunbartonshire.
He told the Lennox Herald: “What I can remember from that night was how strong the winds were and I actually saw trees been blown over in what was then the monument park in Castlehill.
“When I went to school the next day my class got sent home as part of the roof was blown off our classroom and we were out of it for few months.”
Cath Connelly-Aspel was 10 years old at the time and lived in Cumbrae Crescent North in Dumbarton.
She said: “I woke up in the middle of the night because of the noise. I got up and my dad was up too. I was thinking, what is going on?
“I was checking all the windows and I remember thinking there were newspapers flying around outside but then I realised they were actually bits of roof and debris. It was wild.
“I watched a bit of debris fly right through the roof of a man’s car. I remember all I could think was please don’t hit my Mum’s car.
“I could see over to Cumbrae Crescent South where the roof of the flats had been lifted off and then brought back down again. Part of a chimney had fallen as well. That’s how strong it was.
“I wasn’t scared but I just thought: ‘Wow!’ Looking back, you do not realise how frightening it would have been and how bad it was.”
Sheila Gildea, from Dumbarton, was 10 years old at the time. She said: “I first knew of the storm when I was in bed and my sister and I heard the bins being knocked over. At that time the dustbins were metal with rubber lids so you knew the wind must be strong to blow them over.
“When I got up to go to school in the morning many trees had been uprooted, really big old trees with huge roots.”
Jim Crosthwaite added: “My memories are firstly the huge stone chimney at 2 Levengrove Terrace (now 5 Clydeshore Road) close to Levengrove Park.
“It was immediately above my bed, but luckily it tumbled down the substantial slate roof and crashed onto the stairs at the entrance totally destroying and blocking it.”
Top of page picture by Heather Greer