Upon Further Review: Gloria ‘Was A Big Wake-Up Call For Everyone’

OCEAN CITY – Hurricane Gloria might be best remembered as the storm that famously destroyed Ocean City’s Boardwalk 30 years ago this weekend, but can Gloria also be remembered as the storm that helped make Ocean City stronger?
 
If you ask many of the officials who were involved with the repairing the millions of dollars in damages Gloria left behind, they’ll say yes.

Bracing For Major Storm
At 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 1985, just one day before Gloria, the largest hurricane to threaten the Eastern Seaboard in 12 years at that time, would pass by Ocean City’s coastline, Ocean City Mayor Roland “Fish” Powell enacted a city-wide evacuation.

“It’s a bad one”, Powell told The Dispatch in 1985.
Ocean City evacuated an estimated 50,000 people that day, and as Powell remembers it today, he feared it was going to be a big problem for the town.
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