Weather

Hurricane Gallery

In the eye
of the hurricane
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

In the eye of the hurricane, Part III

Times photo by FRED VICTORIN

The Ben Sawyer swing-span bridge is upended by the force of Hugo. The bridge connects Mount Pleasant with Sullivan's Island, S.C.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times, published June 12, 1990

A native of the Philippines, Eddie Gonzales had been through so many tropical storms they were almost routine. He didn't even think about this one until the operating room started to leak.

Gonzales was a fourth-year surgical resident at Charlotte Memorial Hospital. He'd first come on duty at 6 a.m. Thursday, when Hurricane Hugo was kicking around off the coast of Florida. Now, 24 hours later, it was over North Carolina and even Gonzales had a hard time ignoring it. He was sewing up a woman with 30 stab wounds and so much rain was coming in they had to take it out in buckets.

At least he was finished. He could use a break.

"Dr. Gonzales, to the emergency room. Dr. Gonzales, to the emergency room."

It was another young woman. This one had been crushed by a tree. She was conscious but cold and clammy, as though she were about to go into shock. Her pulse was high and her blood pressure low. Her body temperature was just 92 degrees.

The emergency room doctors already had taken X-rays. They showed six cracked ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken pelvis. Now Gonzales inserted a needle into her abdomen to see if there was blood in it. There was, a great deal.

"Mrs. Geiger," he told her, "You have some internal bleeding. We're going to have to operate."

Her spleen was severely ruptured. They took it out. She could live without a spleen, although her body would lose some of its ability to fight infection. Her kidneys were lacerated, too, and there was a large amount of blood around them. They decided to leave those alone, and hope they would heal in time.

A second team of surgeons worked on her foot. The tree had splintered it, and they had to clear away tiny bits of leaves and debris before they could even begin to clean the damaged tissue. Reconstructive surgery would be needed later.

It was slow going. Blood had accumulated in her lungs and they had to put a tube in to drain it. Her low body temperature kept her blood from clotting properly.

After two hours, they had done all they could. The chances of survival: 50-50.

Karen Geiger's husband sat in the waiting room, huddled in a borrowed coat. He had grown up on an island in the hurricane belt, and nothing had ever happened. Now he lived 200 miles from the ocean and a hurricane had upended their lives as easily as it had knocked over a tree.

The house was heavily damaged. He would have to find someplace else for him and their two boys to live. There was no telling how long it would take Karen to recover, or if she would recover at all. When the doctors talked about internal bleeding, he felt a terrible sense of deja vu.

His sister had died of exactly the same thing.

"They sent us to a death trap"

It was still dark in McClellanville when Thomas Williams came down from the rafters.

The kids had managed to sleep but he and his wife Vangie had been awake all night. The worst part had been the noise -- not from outside, but within.

"Man," she said, "It sounds like something's tearing up the house down there."

The water had come to within a foot of the ceiling. Around 3:30 or 4 he noticed that it no longer seemed to be rising. At 5 he was sure of it. The tide was going down. The winds had diminished, too, and they could hear a voice from somewhere to the north.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," Williams shouted back. "Are you all right?"

Then he shined his flashlight to the south, toward the two-story house where his Uncle James lived. The house wasn't there. He felt a chill.

"I'm going down," he said.

He lowered himself through a window. He expected to step onto the porch, but the porch was gone. There seemed to be branches in its place. Then he realized what had happened. The water had lifted the house off its foundation and turned it toward the north. That's why he hadn't been able to see his uncle's place.

He slid into waist-deep water. He had to check on the old man.

Uncle James looked terrible. He was 68 and he had suffered a stroke just two months before. When the water came in, he was in his bed on the first floor. The woman who took care of him was old, and she didn't have the strength to lift him. As the mattress began to float, she dragged it toward the stairs. It floated higher and higher, Uncle James still on it, until finally it reached the second floor landing. Then she had been able to pull him off.

Uncle James was shaking. He was so pale and cold they were afraid he would catch pneumonia.

"Take me to Charleston," he said. "Please, take me to Charleston."

They couldn't take him to Charleston. They couldn't take him anywhere, the roads were so full of trees and water. Williams waded back to his house to see if he could find some dry clothes. It was beginning to turn light, a delayed, gloomy dawn, and now Williams could see what remained of his place.

The inside was unrecognizable. On the outside, most of the new blue siding was gone, exposing the old green clapboards underneath. The porch -- the beautiful cypress porch that he had sanded by hand -- was somewhere back in the woods. The van that he had seen go under water wasn't the neighbor's van at all. It was his own van, and like his car and his truck, it was a total wreck.

At least the vehicles were insured. The only coverage he had on the house was $5,000 for the contents.

He checked on Vangie. She and the kids would have to stay in the attic until the water went down. It was still over Matthew's head.

He rummaged through the house, and turned up one dry sweater, one dry hat and one dry pair of pants. Those he took to Uncle James. Then he got his cousin, and together they waded up and down DuPre Road, checking on the neighbors. They found some in their attics, others on their roofs. Had the water gone much higher, most of them would have drowned.

They made their way to the high school. It had been used as an emergency evacuation shelter. Williams was afraid of what they'd find there.

"Anybody alive?" he hollered.

The principal rushed out. He grabbed Williams, as if for support.

"Oh, Mr. Williams," he said. "They sent us to a death trap."

Williams was glad they hadn't gone there. At least 500 people had, thinking it would be safe and dry. Instead, the water had come in so high they had to get on desks and tables and finally break through the ceiling. Parents had to hold their children over their heads to keep them from drowning.

Williams and his cousin continued checking houses. They found one man with a broken leg. Another had suffered a stroke; a third, a heart attack.

Around 10 a.m., they heard a helicopter. Williams waved at it. The pilot waved back and pointed toward the high school. They were coming to pick up the sick and injured, and it looked as though they were going to land on the football field. Williams got some more men, and together they carried Uncle James to the school, through 3 feet of water.

Now that the old man was taken care of, Williams had other worries. Their house was wrecked and so was the school. There didn't seem to be a dry place in McClellanville. Where would they stay?

The National Guard arrived. It would take them to a shelter. In mid-afternoon, they got on an Army truck, with 20 others from McClellanville. They drove up Highway 17, past the Francis Marion National Forest. Williams couldn't believe it. Millions and millions of trees, and there was hardly one that hadn't been snapped off 10 or 15 feet above the ground. From the road it looked like an old comb, with all the teeth broken.

The truck had no seats, only benches. Vangie and the kids were exhausted. The clouds had blown away, and it had turned hot and muggy again.

"Where are we going?" Vangie asked.

"Baby," he replied. "It's got to be better than what we left."

They were hungry. It was 4:30 p.m. and they hadn't eaten since 6 o'clock the night before. Wait until we get to Georgetown, someone told them.

Georgetown looked almost as bad as McClellanville. There was no food or place to stay. They drove another half hour. They finally stopped, in a place Williams had never seen. It was Waccamaw High School on Pawleys Island, 35 miles from McClellanville.

"This is the only place we could find," they were told.

There was no power. No cots, no blankets, no pillows. They slept on the concrete floor. At 4 p.m. Saturday, someone brought a big cured ham. It was the first food they'd had in almost 48 hours.

They stayed there all day Sunday and most of the day Monday. That night, the Red Cross put them on a bus and drove them back to Georgetown, to the high school. The principal was just opening the gym when they got there. He stared at them.

"We need a shower or something," Williams said. They had been wearing the same clothes for four days. They'd been walking around in mud and seawater and sewage, and they knew they stank. They could no longer smell themselves, because they all smelled the same.

The principal opened one of the shower rooms. Then he went home. A little while later he came back with some clean clothes.

Williams put on the pants. The principal was 5 feet 6. Williams was 6-2. The pants looked like pedal pushers.

His wife laughed. "You know how silly you look?"

"That's all right," Williams said. But he wondered if anything would be all right again.

Everything was covered by mud

John Maybank awoke at daylight. There was still 2 feet of water in the streets of Charleston.

In many ways, he was lucky. The slate roof had held up well, and there had been little leakage from above. The second floor, where he'd taken much of the furniture, was almost dry. The 60-year-old house appeared to have suffered no structural damage.

Still, he realized, he couldn't stay here.

Downstairs was a mess. On the sun porch, where the water had first come in, the furniture looked as though it had been whacked with an ax. Among the pieces they'd had to leave was a large antique chest-on-chest: The biggest piece he could find was a board 2 feet long. In the living room, the water had rolled and banged the piano around, damaging it beyond repair. Everything, from kitchen to dining room to hallway, was covered with mud. And leaves. He was glad he had gotten the oak trees pruned.

Outside, he found most of the shutters in the back yard. Two others had disappeared, probably sucked into the river when the water receded. Heavy slate tiles that had been on the terrace were now embedded in the house. The water had bowled over a concrete block wall, and the wind had knocked the garage clean off its foundation.

He wondered about the rest of the neighborhood. Before he could leave, he had to do something about the front door, which the waves had blasted from its hinges. According to the radio, there was looting on King Street, just a few blocks away in downtown Charleston.

His nephew came by, and together they lifted the door. Then they nailed it into place. From now on, they'd have to go out through the windows, but at least the place wasn't an open invitation to looters.

He was more worried about Kay and his daughter. The phones were dead and he hadn't heard from them. They had gone to Moncks Corner, 30 miles inland, thinking it would safe there.

But the hurricane had lost surprisingly little strength after it hit the coast. It still had 100 mph winds as it headed northwest, and the radio said there had been injuries and heavy damage from trees in the Moncks Corner area.

The house they were staying in had 50 trees around it. Or used to.

Like somebody dropped a bomb

After they fled Isle of Palms, Police Capt. Jim Arnold and the others had gone to the evacuation shelter in Mount Pleasant. It was so crowded people were standing straight up, their arms flat against their sides. The wind kept lifting up the roof.

"Let's try my place," Arnold said. He lived nearby, but they couldn't get there because of the trees. They couldn't make it to Chief Meade's place, either. Finally, they threaded their way through the debris to another officer's house.

Now, at 5 a.m., they were ready to go again. Even inland, the water had come so high the police boat had floated off its trailer. It was still 3 feet deep as they drove back to the shelter to pick up the mayor and the fire chief. The trip, normally five minutes, took an hour.

They got in the boat and headed for Isle of Palms. It was the only way anybody would be able to get there for a long time, they realized. Sometime during the night -- perhaps seconds after they crossed -- the wind had torn the Ben Sawyer Bridge from its pedestal. More than 600 tons of steel dangled a few inches above the Intracoastal Waterway.

They crossed Hamlin Creek. They were going to the mayor's house. She had a dock, and a car, and they planned to get out there and drive around the island.

First they saw the mayor's face. Then they saw her house.

All the glass was gone. The venetian blinds were shattered. The furniture was upside down and the air conditioner had been sucked out of the wall. A tree lay across the roof. There was no sign of her dock, or any other dock along Hamlin Creek.

The mayor looked stunned. There was no point getting out of the boat, not even to secure the house. There were no doors left to close.

At the 41st Street marina, they found dozens of yachts piled in a heap. Just 12 hours before, they had been moored at the Wild Dunes resort, a quarter of a mile away.

They got out and started down the street. Much of the pavement was gone, leaving a hole 40 feet wide and 10 feet deep. There were still several inches of water, and they had to slog around trees, refrigerators, couches, mattresses. It looked like somebody dropped a bomb or turned the houses upside down and shook everything out, Arnold thought.

A half-mile away, on a piece of high ground, they found a pickup truck with the keys in it. It belonged to one of the volunteer firefighter.

"Cal won't mind if we take it," the mayor said.

Those were about the only words anybody spoke. Mostly, they just stared and pointed. There were houses with no roofs. Roofs with no houses. Houses in the middle of the street. Houses teetering on their pilings, as though the slightest breeze would knock them off. The entire island reeked of sewage and propane. No one dared light a cigarette.

The storm surge had gone clear across the island. Most businesses were heavily damaged, if not destroyed. The police station was wrecked. So were the city hall and the fire department. Virtually every house had been flooded, some with 12 or 15 feet of water.

In one yard, they found two Dobermans and a baby deer. The sight cheered Arnold. Then he thought: They must have had to swim like hell.

They came to the Lutheran Retreat, the place they had left the night before. Here, the water had gone no higher than 6 or 7 inches. The generator was still running. The place was so watertight they would have been safer staying than driving across the Ben Sawyer Bridge.

At least they had a command center. Other police officers and firefighters were beginning to arrive, and they fanned out over the island, collecting supplies. They took sheets from the laundry room at Wild Dunes. They took the golf carts, too, because they had no police cars. There was food at the Red and White grocery store: All the windows had blown out so they didn't need the key to get in.

They were set. Now, the big question: What should they do about the residents?

There was no water or phone service. Hugo had knocked out all electrical generating capacity within 125 miles of the coast, and it might be weeks before the power was back on. Hundreds of septic tanks had overflowed and gas fumes filled the air. Most of the roads were impassable and many homes were clearly unfit for habitation. Snakes were everywhere.

They would have to get the National Guard in to help secure property. They would have to barge over heavy equipment to clear the roads. The residents would be better off where they were.

The hard part would be convincing them of that.

They'd seen enough for one day

"Don't worry," the man said. "Just knock the floor back down and you'll be open in a couple of months."

Bill Kulseth wanted to believe it. By all accounts, Isle of Palms had been devastated. He was worried about the Windjammer, the restaurant and lounge that represented 16 years of his life. It was right on the ocean, and from what the radio said most oceanfront property was gone.

Now, on Friday, martial law was in effect and police weren't letting anyone on the island. Still, a few had managed to get there. Someone had seen the Windjammer. The floor was heavily damaged but beyond that the place looked in pretty good shape.

Maybe they're right, Kulseth thought. A TV crew had flown up and down the coast, and he had caught a glimpse of the red and white Budweiser sign on the side of the building. At least the place was still standing.

He, his wife, Norma, and their son, Will, had spent Thursday night at a motel in Mount Pleasant. There weren't many trees around, and the damage didn't look too bad when they got up the next morning -- a collapsed fence, a few broken signs. From what they heard on the radio, they knew this was minor stuff. The barrier islands were another story.

Chances were their house had some water in it. The Windjammer, they feared, had suffered major damage. They wouldn't be allowed to check on either of them until Sunday at the earliest. And then they probably wouldn't be allowed to stay.

Whatever they faced, it would be easier without a 7-year-old boy, a dog and a bird. Norma called her parents in Asheville, N.C. On Friday afternoon, they met in Columbia, about midway, and turned over Will and the pets.

That night, Kulseth called his best friend, Don Lauseng. He, too, lived on Isle of Palms. They were tired of hearing about damage on the island. Tomorrow, martial law or not, they intended to see it.

They set out at 9 a.m. on Lauseng's boat. First they went to Oak Harbor, where Lauseng's in-laws had a house. Eleven inches of water had gone in the front and out the back, but for some reason had missed the bedrooms.

Lauseng's wife owned a beauty parlor in the middle of the island, so they walked over there next. The wind had blown out a door and some rain had come in. But there appeared to be no saltwater damage and the equipment looked untouched.

They were feeling pretty good. There was devastation, to be sure, but so far their own property seemed to largely have escaped. They went to the Windjammer.

"Hey, it doesn't look that bad," Kulseth said. From the street, it did indeed appear remarkably intact.

They walked around to the ocean side. He caught his breath.

The floor had been destroyed, along with the deck and the entire back wall. A dome of water 18 to 20 feet high had smashed the interior to bits. There was so much junk inside, he could stand on it and easily touch the ceiling.

Whoever said he'd be open in two months must have been looking at a different building.

Deflated, they left to check on the houses. They felt like the last people on earth, so ruined and deserted did the island look. As they walked down Palm Boulevard they were startled by the sound of a car. It was amazing anybody could travel that fast on a road so full of debris.

"What the hell are you guys doing over here?" It was a cop.

"We're Isle of Palms residents," Lauseng told him. "Do you want to see our identification? That's one thing but don't tell me I can't see my house."

"I'm going to throw you in jail unless you get out of here."

They started back to the boat. They ran into three men they knew. They had just arrived and they were pumping air into bicycle tires. They, too, wanted to see their houses.

"Hey, guys," Lauseng said. "Don't even try."

Just then they noticed a figure in green and brown and black, emerging from the creek like some sort of swamp creature. It was a young National Guardsman, and he carried a pistol.

"You gotta get off of here."

They didn't argue. They'd seen enough for one day.

* * *

Part Four: They'd never had such a dreary Christmas. There were no parties or decorations. Money was tight because most people still hadn't gotten their insurance settlements.