Hurricane Hugo ~ 20 Years later

[Hotsauce]

http://www.postandcourier.com/stories/2009/sep/16/remembering-hugo2/

Where were you 20 years ago? Did this affect you? It was a big deal here in the Lowcountry.

[cookinwithgas]

I had just moved from Charleston the year before and was safely ensconsed in New England.

Went down that Christmas to Savannah to see the in laws, and took a trip to Charleston right after the big snow storm - man it looked bad there.

[Scrumtrilescent]

We were helping my aunt and uncle evacuate their place on James Island and spent my dad's bday grilling out hamburgers on the kitchen gas range.

[Zcustom]

I was living over near Independence High School and remember watching trees snap in the backyard (in hindsight wasn't very smart). A tornado took out a house 3 doors down from us, spent the next week chopping wood and cleaning up the neighborhood.

[Guest]

I am an expert hurricane dodger....hugo - i was in Raleigh...Fran and Floyd - I was in Greensboro.

[Carolina Husker]

We moved to Charlotte 36 hours after Hugo passed through. That was fun.

[Murph]

In Wilmington getting the outer bands. A couple of 80 mph gusts downed trees throughout the city but not much else.

[Scrumtrilescent]

I about cut my brother in half with a chainsaw. It was awesome!

[BMorgan]

I was a freshman at the College of Charleston.

My parents came and picked up me, a suite mate, and a friend who lived off campus who had nowhere else to go, about 10 or 11 pm on the 20th. We got to Gastonia about 3 or 4 am on the 21st. My suite mate caught his flight that was to connect in CLT to VA. My friend caught the bus home to Indy (she was supposed to go to her relatives house in TN, but changed her mind and went home).

I stayed up watching the TV coverage in Charleston until we lost power I think about 2 am or so when the tornadoes came through. We had no power for a week, lost a lot of game and other food we had in the freezer because we couldn't cook it all. A neighbor got an adapter to hook our community well system up to a city fire hydrant so we could have water.

We didn't have any major damage because we didn't have any large trees, just lost a few shingles. We were lucky.

We were out of school about 3 weeks. It was strange going back to Charleston, but they had a lot of it cleaned up by the time we got back.

[Towelboy]

charlotte...i was 6. i remember all the neighbors grilling out since there was no power and everyone's frozen meat needed to be eaten before it spoiled.

we were without power for 13 days. a tree fell on our house, but did minimal damage.

[mush]

Was watching TV at my apartment at UNCC until the power went out, then I went to bed and slept through it all. Next morning there was no power in Charlotte and trees everywhere. A good bit of price gouging ensued. No generators to be found, but with no power no gas pumps would run.

My father ran a bread truck and ironically a little bakery in Shelby was the only bread company around with power to run the lines. Some grocery stores opened even though they had no power, and would take a bunch of flash lights and let people go in with flashlights to shop. When one person came out of the store, they would let another one go in. That was back before the bar code days, when there were price stickers on everything so they took battery operated calculators to add up people's bill.

My father worked all weekend delivering bread because we had the only bakery running. 4 truck loads of it and even had other bread companies buying from us because they had nothing.

[Towelboy]

the day we got a generator, the power came back on.

[RedMage138]

I was 1 year old. I remember it vividly...

[Hawk]

just like those funny stories about landing on the moon...I think it's all a conspiracy