31 years ago...

What I remember most...

I slept through it. I woke up to no power, and my mom said I needed to get dressed for school (9th grade). I told her if the bus came, I’d go just as I was...boxers and a t-shirt.

We had a tree fall on the aerial drop to our house, and it ripped the meter box off the wall. So when power was restored to our neighborhood after a couple days, we went two more weeks without it. I pretty much stayed at the church to take showers and play basketball.
 
Has it really been that long, thanks for the reminder that I’ve gotten damned old.

I was in Chicago, we were gathering supplies and equipment and driving down to keep the cell phone network running. Our MTSO was across the street from a KFC, and after two weeks without power the KFC decided to empty their freezer into the parking lot, it smelled like 1,000 people had died and been left in the sun for a month, and there was no way to get away from it.
 
I woke up at 12:30 I’ll never forget that night wind whistling through the windows and trees snapping all around when the sun came up it looked like a war zone we couldn’t go anywhere trees down everywhere

Wow 31 years that’s crazy time is moving
 
I remember my high school being turned into a shelter. No running water for over 2 weeks. I remember sitting in the den with my family listening to the wind. My dad going out in the eye of the storm to pick up one of my mom's single friends and bring her back to our house.

For the weeks that followed, I remember the clean up. Cutting and moving so many trees that when I closed my eyes at night all I saw was pine needles.

I remember Anheiser Bush giving out canned water.

I remember SC losing 70% of its natural forests. And I vividly remember the pine tree that was picked up by a tornado and planted through our neighbors roof and into his kitchen.

The lines of snapped off trees where you could see where the tornado lifted up and then came back down again as you followed the height of the stumps.

I remember the TV stations going dark and then listening to the radio as one by one they dropped off the air until only one remained.
 
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Wife slept the whole time. I was up and down thru the night. I left to go to work in Cary from Angier, normally 35-45 minutes. 3 hrs later I got there. Trees down in the dark made for fun drive. Back tracking to get around flooded roads. We closed early. Only 2 hrs to get back home. It was a busy week in auto glass lol. We lost 1 shingle and no power for 2 days. Felt bad for folks but we had it okay


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I slept through most of it, but got up in time to watch the eye move past us to the west. I got my drivers license while our schools were shut down, and went dove hunting for the first time. Missed every bird I shot at with my single shot 20 gauge. Couldn’t use my dad’s pump 12 gauge since I couldn’t find the plug for it and didn’t know I could just cut a piece of dowel to use as a plug.
 
Here's a pretty good video of the damage in my home town. It was everywhere. Very few buildings escaped having any damage. It was still a category 4 when it hit Sumter and we got the full eye and then the winds going in reverse. That's when most of the damage happened.

 
I was young. Slept through the whole thing. We had just moved from the lake to my parents dream house (mid 1800’s victorian) but still owned the lake place. Had two yards worth of trees down to clean up. The lake house had an upstairs porch built around a large tree and it came down (away from the house) and took the whole porch with it.
 
Slept through it. The kids were furious with me when I woke them to get ready for school. They had been up with their Dad listening to it. Tornado touched down less than 1 mi. from us.
 
Forgot to add, on the one radio station that remained. When the eye hit he was telling everyone thank god the storm has passed. Someone called in and said look you idiot this is just the eye. He didn't believe them and the caller said "I'm looking at my weather station. The barometric pressure just bottomed out and is beginning to climb back up and the wind direction has reversed. Stop telling everyone its over or you're going to get people killed."
 
We lived in Charlotte on Hwy 51 in an apartment, owned a housr then on Oak Island.
I was working a contract job for DuPont across from South Park Mall.
We went to bed after seeing that it cam in south of Charlestown and not over the house as was originally projected.

Got woke up at 2:30 or so by a large limb breaking outside.
No lights so I took a flashlight and was looking outside at everything going sideways.
Our apartment was on the bottom lower on a hillside.
I wondered what it must have been like to be in one on top of the hill.

Only out of power for 2 days as the main lines ran down Hwy 51.
Friends were without power for 2+ weeks and came over to bath.

Fun times with a 2 1/2 year old around, she thought it was just one big party.
 
I was without power for over 2 weeks in South Charlotte. My house is cedar siding, my parents lived around the corner in a brick house. My wife said that we should go to my parents house. I told her that she could go for it if she wanted but I was staying inside!
 
Nothing in the Triangle.

I was at ECU, we drove as far south as we could get to surf the day before it made landfall, got as far as Myrtle Beach. The swells were so high we walked to the end of a pier and the water was almost level....we just put our boards down and rode in. We did that for two, three hours, then the cops came...
 
I slept through most of it, but got up in time to watch the eye move past us to the west. I got my drivers license while our schools were shut down, and went dove hunting for the first time. Missed every bird I shot at with my single shot 20 gauge. Couldn’t use my dad’s pump 12 gauge since I couldn’t find the plug for it and didn’t know I could just cut a piece of dowel to use as a plug.


Another thing, that was the first time I noticed how clean the air was and how bright the sunlight was after a tropical system moves through. For a few days after Hugo, everything was so vivid and clean. I’ve seen that many times since then, but the affect of the storm on air quality was so noticeable after Hugo.
 
I was living on top of the mountain near Fancy Gap, VA, up there where we were never affected by hurricanes. Maybe some rain, that's all. Hugo rolled in about daybreak. I was watching out the front window at the wind blow the trees. I saw the wind snap a 2 foot diameter pine about 5 feet up from the ground. That's when I decided this storm was not the usual storm.

I was living in a 4 year old log home. The logs were tongue and groove with foam insulation on each side of the grooves. The wind blew the rain between the logs, the only time that ever happened. We were without power for 8 days but, no major damage. My home was down in a hollow so we were protected from some of the winds. Some of the forests and wooded areas looked like a child's game of pick up sticks. New River was out of it's banks. All of this was up in the mountains where the hurricanes don't go.
 
I remember it well. We had just bought our first house a few months before the storm. I was managing an equipment rental store. We rented saws, chippers, generators, pumps, etc. I was lucky to get a 5000watt generator to keep our fridge running, and run the well. Power was out for a week.
As soon as the crisis was over, I bought my first generator, and that's when I started "prepping".
 
Another thing, that was the first time I noticed how clean the air was and how bright the sunlight was after a tropical system moves through. For a few days after Hugo, everything was so vivid and clean. I’ve seen that many times since then, but the affect of the storm on air quality was so noticeable after Hugo.

And the high pressure that follows makes everything hotter than balls....
 
My father was smart enough to not believe that the storm wouldn't be much when it hit us. He bought a couple generators and parked one of our swamp truck with a 500 gallon water tank behind the house and filled about 40 of those 5 gallon collapsible water bags for drinking water.

We used the water from the truck to bathe with, water from our neighbors pools to flush with and had plenty of drinking water on hand.

Others didn't plan ahead and suffered.
 
My uncle double tied up his boat in Southport and went back to the farm thinking that he would never again be able to use the boat. Another fellow tied up his boat as best he could and went back to Charlotte where he would be safe in his home. The storm took a left turn and did not hit Cape Fear but did smash the fellow's home in Charlotte. Both boats were untouched. You never can tell what those monsters will do.
 
I rode it out on this 250' turd...
We stayed out 4 days, never left the Charleston area. We were 1st back in so we could sonar survey the channel back to the Naval base.
26' seas.
It was AMAZING to see the debris that was floating offshore.
We stopped and tried to snag a small alligator about (iirc) 3-4 miles offshore.
The USS Petrel ASR-14 was the pride of the submarine rescue fleet in 1945... It sucked in 1989!
Pic is of USS Tringa ASR-16... Sister to USS Petrel.
 

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Slept through most of it. The wind woke me up a couple times. I got called into work at Winn-Dixie. Bagging groceries under generator power. Every time the power would flicker on it would shut down the cash registers. Finally stopped bagging groceries until they had paid so I didn't have to un bag them to re scan. My grandparents had so many trees come down you could move around on part of the property without being on the ground, and occasionally being 10-15' off the ground on the trees.
 
I was in grad school in Boulder. That sucker barreled in right through Charleston, then turned northish. The eye passed just two counties east of my folks...I was worried sick about them. Turns out they were OK but I was aghast at the pictures of the destruction, particularly downed timber.
 
Slept right through it. I was a sophomore in high school. Never knew it happened for several days.



I didn't live here then
 
Was in the field at Bragg..."someone" decided it was a great opportunity to train under extreme environmental conditions...we stayed in the field and practiced platoon movement to contact...it was interesting.
 
I was living in a 12x50 mobile home about 200 yards from the ocean on 9th avenue south in Murder Beach. When we rode over to the beach, the entire Ocean Boulevard was a foot deep in sand. The were mobile homes around me with trees through the side. Again we were 200 yards from the Ocean. The woman that was with me at that time [wife #3, also known as The Anti Christ] had left her flip flops on the BBQ grill. They were still on top of the grill, untouched. Our little yard was clean as a pin. We spotted some Santee Cooper men working on a pole 2 blocks away, she walked down and asked them if they would help her get her power back on. We were back in the power business in 30 minutes!
Murder Beach was a Mess. I was completely unaffected.....wellllll except for the Anti Christ.
 
Pulled the night shift at the local prison camp and got soaked working the yard as the wind was blowing the rain sideways. At dawn hopped in the sack for some sleep to be wakened by more wind but this time from a different direction. That’s when the trees started falling. Later as the wind let up I got the chain saw out and joined in on clearing the highway and neighbor’s driveways. This one neighbor lived in a grove of 60+ feet pines and there were no trees left standing on his four acres but amazingly not one of the trees hit the house or vehicles. He claimed divine interdiction and I had to agree. Too live over 200 miles away from the coast and then see the destruction another couple of hundred miles from a sea storm was unbelievable at the time but happen it did.
 
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I remember working double shifts at Lowe’s warehouse shipping generators and tarps....without power for a week, still had city water.
 
Yep. Member that one. Boy what a doozie. We was without power for a few weeks. Amazing at the damage done compared to how fast the storm moved through.
 
I was in Charleston the following day with 2 Ch-53s, 4 Ch-46s and 2 Uh-1s. We moved a bunch of boats, trucks and the skids did some water rescues. Some large sailboats would disconnect the mast so we pulled it out before lifting the rest of the boat off the bottom.

It was great to help people but horrible to see what those poor folks dealt with!
 
I was in grad school in Boulder. That sucker barreled in right through Charleston, then turned northish. The eye passed just two counties east of my folks...I was worried sick about them. Turns out they were OK but I was aghast at the pictures of the destruction, particularly downed timber.


The forecast the day before was for it to hit the coast in the Charleston area and bounce back out to sea.

.
 
Was little but remember waiting it out here in greensboro to pass to make sure things were ok here to load up truck soon as it was over with chainsaws and small honda 125 three wheeler and trailer to go to charlotte where grandparents lived right near airport and were without power and clean up 10-12 trees up that had fallen and surrounded there house. Used the crap out of that little three wheeler dragging brush and limbs for them and neighbors since no one had any equipment around them.
 
I remember listening to a few of my windows breaking and hearing trees come crashing down. The next morning I loaded my chainsaws and some tools in the back of my old CJ7 and started cutting trees and dragging them out of the road so I could go check on my Dad. We lived about a mile apart. I got halfway to his house and met him. He was doing the same thing as I was to check on me. We finished clearing the road and then started helping our neighbors clear their driveways. Our power was out for nearly three weeks, but we survived just fine.
 
Why do I find this disturbing, or worthy of it's own thread.

Yeah her daughter and my sister were best friends. My mom and dad tried to convince her that it was better safe than sorry and a vinyl sided house that wasn’t built so great was no place to ride out this storm. Come stay in our brick home.

She was a strong single mother that didn’t need no man lol. When the eye hit she called (phones worked till the wind reversed direction). Windows were broken and part of her roof was gone. My dad, after agreeing to come get her in his truck hung up and said “I should have told her she was on her on since she was too stupid to come here when we told her to. But I can’t do that to her kids. They didn’t ask to have a dumbass as a mom. Don’t y’all dare repeat that”.

Then he drove over downed trees and through peoples yards and a couple of fields the 15 miles to her house, loaded them up and brought them back. They pulled in the driveway about 10 seconds before the wind picked back up.

She did give the old man a nice stihl chainsaw for Christmas that year as a thank you.

On a side note I was about 16 at the time. She used to rub my shoulders and would occasionally rub her stocking foot up my leg “on accident”. It think that explains a fetish of mine. Lol.
 
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