Text 1: Porthkellan counts the cost after night of 90mph gusts, by Jenna Treloar

An original contemporary newspaper report.

Residents of Porthkellan spent yesterday clearing up after the strongest winds the harbour town has seen in a decade, with gusts of up to 90mph recorded on the headland shortly after 2am.

Roofs were stripped of tiles along Fore Street, and in Chapel Row a chimney stack crashed through the roof and into the bedroom of a terraced house. Its owner, Dawn Clemo, had moved her two sons downstairs an hour earlier because the noise was keeping them awake. ‘We were under the stairs with the dog,’ she said. ‘If they’d been in their beds, I don’t like to think about it.’

Two trees came down across the main road, crushing three parked cars, and more than 6,000 homes in the area lost electricity, some for over a day. On the seafront, waves tore away a section of railings and threw shingle across the promenade.

By first light, neighbours were out with ladders and tarpaulins, covering holes in each other’s roofs. The surf club opened its clubhouse for families who could not stay at home, and a local bakery handed out free pasties.

Roofing firms say they are already booked for six weeks. ‘You couldn’t buy a tarpaulin in this town by lunchtime,’ said one builder.

Text 2: A letter after the great gale, by Jane Polglase

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is a letter written in the 1860s by a woman in a Cornish fishing town to her sister after a severe storm.

My dear Elizabeth,

We are all safe, thank God, and I write at once so that you shall not be anxious when you read of the gale in the newspapers. It began soon after dark on Tuesday and blew the whole night with a fury I never heard in my life. The slates flew off the roofs along the quay like leaves in autumn, and none of us dared go near a window.

At about one in the morning there was a crash that shook our house to its foundations. The chimney of the Widow Keverne’s cottage opposite had fallen in through her roof and filled her bedroom with stones. By the mercy of Providence she had gone down to sit in her kitchen, being too frightened to sleep, and so she was spared.

The worst is in the harbour. The sea came clean over the quay, and seven of the fishing boats were torn from their moorings and dashed to pieces against the rocks. Those boats were the whole living of seven families, and I do not know how they will manage this winter.

This morning every man in the town was out upon the roofs, and the women carried tea and bread to them. The weathercock is gone from the church tower, and no one can find it.

Your loving sister,

Jane

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what damage the storms caused and how people responded.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.