In 1989 a hurricane hit Charlotte pretty squarely; resulting
in an experience I will gladly pass up if offered again. Without belittling
those at the coast who experience more destruction more frequently, a hurricane
is an experience here in the piedmont
so I will pass on my observations and feelings of the event.
The Third Week of September 1989.
A major hurricane called Hugo shares front-page news as it crosses
the Atlantic and slams the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, destroying as much
as 90% of the housing in some places. It does not cross over into the
Caribbean, but veers back into the Atlantic taking a bead on the Southern coast
some three days away.
Thursday, 21 September.
Hugo is clearly poised almost directly at Charleston, SC and surprises
meteorologists by actually intensifying from 120 to 135 mph winds over the Gulf
Stream - by any assessment a major storm: force IV
on a scale of V. Thanks
to the clear danger and accuracy of predicted landfall; the coast, and
especially the barrier islands, is thoroughly evacuated.
By afternoon the radio is recommending a certain battening
down in Charlotte such as bringing in lawn furniture that might be picked up by
gusts. One customer is actually making plans in case one employee can't get to
work Friday and everyone is joking about the fine weather we'll have for our
vacation which starts the next day. In fact, I observe that we're going to
Gatlinburg on the other side of the mountains and expect only to have to contend
with rain as we leave town. Since we're
going to be closed for four days anyway, I unplug the computers as I leave for
the evening.
In the evening I go out to get flashlight batteries and film
for the trip and end up walking a mile home because the truck's battery is weak
from being 4-years-old and not having been driven for over a week. It was a
pleasant walk - not really blustery with just a hint of rain. We do decide not
to leave the car parked under the canoe suspended from the ceiling of the
carport, close the windows on the porch and even bring the garbage can in.
The center of the hurricane is now scheduled to hit just north
of Charleston at midnight, almost simultaneously with high tide. Since we've
got the day off and aren't planning to leave until noon, we haven't done any
packing or preparation for the trip.
Friday, 22 September.
The power blinks about 4:00 am setting off a burglar alarm, as
usual, in the neighborhood and waking the dog. Since the wind and rain are
already heavy, we bring the dog inside and watch the storm with curiosity when
the power goes off for good. (This doesn't surprise us because we must be on a
weak line - the power goes off for as much as 12 hours a couple times a year. It's such a nuisance
we even bought a battery-powered TV for here in the middle of the city.)
By about 5:30 it's apparent we're not going back to sleep so
we turn on the TV to see if we can find out how the coast fared. The cheap TV
doesn't have click-stop tuning but I'm surprised to be picking up channel 7
from Spartanburg - 90 miles away. Maybe, I say, channel 3's transmitter lost their
feed from the studio and is snatching the network off the air. Soon we see a
familiar face but the production looks like something out of the 50's: they're not
at the usual set, or even the "newsroom" set, but two anchors huddling
around a single microphone on a table, in front of a single fixed camera with
people continually walking behind them out a door to a hall.
It seems that Charlotte has been hit squarely by a storm that lost
its hurricane designation (74 mph sustained winds) barely 20 miles away. We're
told that there is no lightning tonight - those continual flashes in the sky
are power lines falling and transformers dying.
A little before 8:00, during the calm we know is just the eye
of the storm, we all poke our head out the front door. Unfortunately, the cat
gets spooked off the stoop by a loose dog in the yard and disappears outside;
with more hurricane to come. A couple cars come down the street and turn around
in our driveway so we walk out to see the way blocked with branches from both
sides of the street. Surprisingly, there's the newspaper at the end of the
driveway, barely wet. The back yard is
covered with green leaves on twigs but I don't see much destruction from a
quick walk around the house.
As the back side of the storm arrives with diminished winds,
we fix our tea on the camp stove, read the paper by the oil lantern and watch
the battery TV - familiar activities as I mentioned that power outages are not
uncommon on our block.
The reports coming in reveal that Charlotte got hit with unprecedented
and unexpected destruction: travel as impassable as in a heavy snow, large
percentages of traffic lights and power out,
trees down, houses damaged, a radio station tower blown over. An ambulance out
in the storm got stymied by falling trees both before and behind it. Apparently
no one else was out as there are no significant reports of personal injuries.
When the rain stops again, I go out to check on the office.
The mood is very like when Charlotte gets hit by a major snow storm: very
little traffic at 10:00 on a Friday morning, some strollers out, and a few
people starting cleaning up. Except that the strollers are in shorts and short
sleeves, the people cleaning up are out with rakes and saws, and the roads are
impassable from large, immobile objects, not stuck cars.
Before getting to the corner I have to drive around and over a
fallen power line to the streetlight. Then, as I pull out, I glance over and
see a gnarled old cedar tree lying flat on the lawn of the church. In the next
block there's a large oak with its roots in the air, leaning against the roof
of a house. When I turn down The Plaza, I can see city crew already attacking
some debris in the oncoming lanes in the next block. Then I see a tree,
uprooted, laying flat on the ground. Then, all of a sudden, it's "there's
another one! ... wow! and another!" In the mile trip down the street, I
guess that every other house must have had a tree blown down. And branches
aren't just broken or a fork split like I'm used to with ice storms; the entire
3-foot diameter tree is blown over with the roots bringing up a patch of sod as
much as 10 feet across.
As I pull in the front driveway at the office Charles, our employee,
comes in the back - he's one of those people who just can't resist being in the
middle of the distraction ... or maybe the real distraction was at home since
schools were closed. A few branches are laying around and our wooden sign has
fallen off the building and is laying undamaged on the sidewalk. Other than
that there are no problems, not even any rain blown in the roof vents and
dripping in the ceiling; a too common occurrence. Of course, the power is off,
but the office was going to be closed anyway.
When I get home, we go for a walk with the dog but the
entrance to the park is blocked with a tree completely across the path. One of
our neighbors is attacking the blockage in the street with a carpentry saw and
I offer to lend my chain saw, if he has an extension cord long enough. We both
chuckle that it'll probably be a couple days before electricity comes back to our block. A more
complete walk around the yard reveals that a 15-year-old, 2-foot-diameter pecan
in the back corner is toppled; falling along the fence without damaging it but
crushing our new blackberry patch with its crown. The next-door-neighbor's telephone
line is on the ground, but our services seem to be intact. Patricia has
telephoned her mother who couldn't get a line into Charlotte due to the
busyness.
Jane calls to say that her power is off at her house and the
main building at Sharon Towers is still on its emergency generator four hours
after the storm. This surprises me as I would expect them to be a priority
right after the hospitals. Her main concern is that very few of the staff have
made it in so there is no one to prepare meals, even if they could cook.
As we're packing, the only thing that bothers me is that power
outages are so general that there are only a few gas stations open, and we've
only got a quarter tank in the truck. Oh well, I just bought 2-1/2 gallons for
the lawn mower and that should get us to South Carolina, I figure. We have
carefully not opened the freezer door so it should be good for 24 to 36 hours,
but we do put everything we can from the refrigerator in an ice chest.
On I-277 through town, it's more "wow! lookit
that!." Even the large overhead directional signs on the interstate have
been blown down. While a few major intersections have police directing traffic,
it's generally defensive driving, obstacle avoidance time. Not a single traffic
light is working. Even the six-lane street has trees blocking one or two lanes
and some neighborhoods are impassable. Fortunately there is very little traffic
except for an unexplained bottleneck at the on-ramp to the interstate. There
must be some blockage at the previous, major interchange forcing people to
grope through the back streets to the next exit.
Going southwest the interstate is clear but we can see trees
down for 30 miles out of town. We also watch convoys of utility trucks coming
to help Charlotte out from the Gulf coast, where we so often send help for storm
damage. I finally stop for gas in Kings Mountain, but the stations are closed.
At the next exit, a truck stop is open, but the crowd of cars at the two
islands of gas is practically a mob and I decide my elbows aren't sharp enough.
Finally, by the time we get to Gaffney, I can get gas and even a bag of ice
without having to stand in three lines. At least the sun has come out and the
afternoon is almost pleasant.
Saturday, 23 September
Kathy and Phil (Patricia's sister) were to have flown in to Knoxville
Friday, but their connection was through Charlotte and the Charlotte airport
was closed down ALL day Friday. They finally make it through Charlotte today
where the airport still was not up to full capacity. Unfortunately, they don't
pick up a Charlotte paper. Although most of the coverage is rightfully concentrated
on the coast, TV and even the New York Times mention that Charlotte was hard
hit by the storm. I still haven't seen any reports of what happened between
Charleston and Charlotte.
Sunday, 24 September
We finally talk to Sandy Frye who came by to take care of the animals.
Although he has power at home in Waxhaw, Charlotte is still largely without
electricity. He is anxious to get out of town before dark because not only are
there no street lights, the streets are still a tangled mass of trees and
cables down.
Monday, 25 September
It's a dreary, rainy day so we leave early to come home and
clean out the refrigerator. The radio is reporting that Charlotte is still
under siege so we make a point of stopping at a grocery store in Gastonia where
we pick up milk, orange juice and bread and a couple bags of ice.
Charlotte still looks like the storm was this morning, not 3
days ago. Utility lines are a tangle everywhere, very few traffic lights are
working, neighborhood streets are barely passable, many offices and even
retailers are closed, and school has already been cancelled for the entire
week. The report is that 90% of the customers in the city - 200,000 - lost
their electric service and only 40% has been restored.
We're just as glad that we came home early so we can clean out
the refrigerator in the light. Everything goes. We had bread but it was on the
bottom shelf of the freezer and the meat thawed all over it. The only thing we
salvage are some nuts that were on the door of the freezer and raisins that
were on the top shelf of the refrigerator. We grill some hot dogs that we've
been carrying around in the ice chest for three days. Everyone else was eating their
steaks over the weekend but ours went in the trash - two garbage cans full and
yet another bag besides.
It still was worth it to go on with our vacation and not have
to worry about having to dive into the cleanup. I truly did not expect the
power to be off this long and there's not much we could have saved after three
days. You can cook the food on the grill but then if you still don't have
refrigeration, what do you do?
Tuesday, 26 September
At least we have power at work. We fix our breakfast there, stuff what we have into the little
refrigerator, and plug in the rechargeables.
Business is relatively normal except that there's no backlog
from having been closed for two days - so was everyone else.
We take our first real look around the neighborhood since
Hugo. The destruction is immense: Winter St. must have been impassable. There
are trees down so thick you couldn't climb into some yards as well as tarps on
many roofs. One short block of Midwood Place still has lines down that we can
barely get in, and two cars out of three houses are smashed. At Chatham and
Belvedere the house had a nice 4-foot-high curved brick garden wall a car had
knocked a hole in years ago. Within the last month it had been rebuilt as
elegantly as originally. It's smashed. There's a house on Thomas that has a nice
sunny front yard, belied only by the pile of logs where it was once shady. A
house on Commonwealth was hit so squarely by such a large tree I'll bet it was
knocked off its foundation.
Myers Park, famous for its 70-year-old oaks still has its
canopy but there are large holes letting in daylight. Dilworth and Elizabeth
and Eastover, all the old neighborhoods with mature trees are reported to be
the hardest hit in the city. Pin oaks and pines and some of the street trees
were most susceptible to damage. Most of the pines were topped, leaving a
10-foot stump while the oaks were uprooted and caused more damage where they fell.
I thought we were lucky that the old maple out front came through unscathed,
perhaps because it is old and does not have a dense crown, but the city
arborist commented that very few maples were toppled.
South Carolina estimates that a billion dollars worth of
forests were destroyed. They can log the trees that are down now, but production
will be hurt for 20 years before a forest will recover.
Wednesday, 27 September
Most of the commercial area around our office seems back to normal
except that one customer on a back street nearby is still taking orders by
candlelight. We decide to go out for a hot lunch of meat and vegetables; but
the restaurant's closed when we get there. Our A&P is dark as we go by. At
K-Mart there are skids of Coleman gas and stoves stacked up as you go in the
door. Harris Teeter is well-stocked with ice, and discounting it too, but one bag
came from Raleigh and another from Georgia.
Duke Power, which had been reporting returning service to
8%-10% of the city each day revises their estimates of who has power ... from
58% to 43%! Six days after the storm!
Thursday, 28 September
A good Samaritan cleaning up a stranger's yard is killed when
a tree falls on him. A man suffers a heart attack hauling debris. A lineman is
electrocuted when a hot wire falls on him.
The piedmont death toll, which stood at one as the storm
passed, is approaching a half dozen.
Friday, 29 September
It's getting depressing that conversation is amounting to "Really?
You STILL don't have your power back?" We take a pool between us: Patricia
says it'll come back Saturday afternoon; but I'm betting on Monday.
One of our customers, who happens to be on the Mint Hill town council,
says he told Duke Power if they can't get his back soon to make him the very
last to be turned on. There's no distinction in being in the last 10%.
Saturday, 30 September
To make the clean up even nastier, it's a dreary day. In fact,
we get more rain this weekend than Hugo itself left. For lack of anything else
to do, we go to work all day.
Sunday, 1 October
The rain continues, and Jane calls to say she finally got her power
back. It seems everyone but us is getting back on line. A utility truck has
been working in front of the church so Hannah and I go to see what's up, just
as they pull away. They have turned the power on along Mecklenburg Ave., just
50 feet out the back door.
Monday, 2 October
We both comment that now there's no point in sharing power
from the neighbors. What an extension cord or generator could give us just
wouldn't matter that much now. We're getting used to living with the Coleman
stove and kerosene lamp and candles.
Except for opening a couple new packages of socks, for the
first time we're even worrying about clothes. Patricia washes some underwear and
laments how slowly it air dries.
Tuesday, 3 October
What's the first thing you're going to do when the power comes
back on?
* Part my hair
* Put on make-up sitting down
* Run the garbage disposal
* Get the rental video out of the VCR
Even non-procrastinators have faith that they can do something
tomorrow. Like the garbage disposal and dish washer, which have been incubating
for a week and a half now. I wouldn't dare hand wash those dishes, maybe we
should run the cycle twice.
A columnist observes that a hurricane is nature’s way of
telling you to defrost your refrigerator.
Wednesday, 4 October
The extension cord that was running across Mecklenburg Ave. near
The Plaza is gone today.
Country Club Lane is blocked at the corner and we hear
machinery working as we come home. No, that's just the city; out with a front-end-loader
picking up debris in the street.
I'm in Radio Shack and two separate customers are saying
"I don't really watch a lot of television, but I'm about to go crazy."
One was buying a battery TV, but the other was just trying to find some good
rabbit ears. People without electricity are being very patient, but when the
power does come back they get testy without their cable.
Thursday, 5 October
I count no fewer than 15 utility trucks working in and around
the park. There are more all through the neighborhood. They seem to be working
diligently on Winter and Chatham Sts., but not Country Club Lane. Our line runs
through the back yards and there's a broken pole two houses down I'm sure no
one wants to get in to replace. But at 7:00 there is a truck in there replacing
it in the dusk.
Friday, 6 October
A crew is replacing the line to the house two doors down.
Other than that, I don't see much activity around here. The reports are that
99% plus of the customers are back on line. If there are fewer than 1,000
people without power a third or more must be in our neighborhood. That's really
discouraging.
On our way out to supper, I drop a disc off for the computer club
newsletter (fortunately when I wrote it last month, it was on the office
computer), and John was incredulous we still didn't have power. So, we stopped
at the grocery store on the way home and got a single can of orange juice and
some ice, as we had several times before.
But when we pulled into the driveway there were lights blazing
in the house! What a luxury to be able to see into the next room at night. To
have a cup of tea in the morning without having to fiddle with the Coleman
stove. To wash clothes and dishes. Even to vacuum the rugs.
Fourteen days and fourteen hours without electricity in the middle
of a major inland city. You just don't expect to be without basic
infrastructure that long. I won't complain about having to reset the clocks the
next time the power blinks for a few minutes, at least until next year.
My question is whether the utility took the opportunity of
this forced rebuilding of their distribution system to improve the basics of
the network. Our block goes off a couple times a year. Did they put in a
heavier switch or bigger transformer since they were replacing it anyway? I'm
sure some neighborhoods, because of the way they grew, must be served in an
inefficient manner. Did they straighten out a tangle of feeder lines? Or do
they not have a grand plan of massively upgrading their engineering and could only
make the judgement to splice the lines that existed before the catastrophe?
Saturday, 7 October
Now I can get out my electric chain saw and start to cut up
the one tree that fell in our yard. But I burn out the motor almost immediately
and go to Mac Blythe's to get a new one. Honest, I would have been in the
market for a new saw this month anyway. He mentioned it's a shame I can't wait
a couple months as there should be lots of almost new saws for sale in the
classifieds.
Saturday, 14 October
The out-of-town utility workers went home last Friday, just in
time to give their motel rooms to the race fans. The last of the residences got
their power Sunday. I think the Duke Power workers must have just slept this
week (and I don't blame them) as they haven't touched the street lights that
are out. Some lines that don't serve any customers are still on the ground or
hanging low over the streets. A broken pole in the park hasn't been replaced but
the lines just run twice as far without support.
Now the lament is the piles of debris at the curb waiting for someone
to cart it away. The city estimates that merely hauling and disposing of what
three weeks ago was 150,000 of our trees will cost $30 million - our snow
removal budget for 100 years! Hopefully federal disaster aid will pay for that
but they require the use of private contractors, which means multiple bids,
which means more delay. The latest estimate is it will all be gone by spring.
Despite the devastation, I predict that next summer Charlotte will
still be known as a city of trees. Some people will curse the tree that knocked
down their phone line or put a hole in their roof, but more will replace the
gap in their urban forest. An article in the paper was just lamenting the
monoculture of Queens Road West's too many pin oaks planted too close together.
Maybe we'll have as many trees in more varieties because of Hugo. Come back in
50 years.
Thank goodness for what we did have during these trying times:
* Hot water
* Mild weather
* The Coleman stove
* The kerosene lamp
* Power at work
* The battery TV
