Mount Pleasant Magazine July/August 2019

43 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com feature be bad. The bridge looked like a super slide sticking out of the water. We arrived at the marina and found most of the boats and docks on the opposite side of the waterway. Power lines were wrapped in downed trees. Propane tanks littered the island. There was no drinking water. There were several flooded streets polluted with sewage. Several roads had collapsed, including Breach Inlet Bridge. Vehicles and boats were flipped over. Most of the structures had moderate to severe damage — many were gone — and there was no sign of life, except snakes.” To put it succinctly, the islands and a lot of the Lowcountry post-Hugo resembled a war zone. Graham’s own property was destroyed by Hugo. She just didn’t know it yet. “I remember Chief Stith (Sullivan’s Island fire chief ) calling me on the radio saying, ‘Annie, if you ever want to see your house again, you better get over here. They are going to bulldoze it.’ As I walked through the house, I picked up a ceramic boot, helmet and fire hydrant from the floor. These are my only personal belongings to survive the storm. I still cherish the ceramic items to this day, as they were given to me by a close friend.” It’s not a matter of if, but only when, another major hurricane makes a direct hit on the Lowcountry. While we cannot control a storm’s path, we can derive a plan to prepare for it. Town of Mount Pleasant Emergency Manager Amanda Knight said that hurricane preparedness changed after Hugo and continues to evolve as the field of emergency preparedness grows and strengthens our resiliency. “We have access to better forecasting and modeling of tropical weather. This has given us more accurate landfall predictions and more time to prepare,” explained Knight. Charleston County Emergency Management Director Jason Patno noted that the National Hurricane Center has made technological advances to more accurately predict storms, although there is still no way to precisely project where a storm makes landfall. Preparedness has also improved since Hugo with respect to streamlining evacuation. After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, a plan was developed for lane reversal on I-26 that has been successfully implemented during Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, thanks to a partnership among local, state and federal entities. Isle of Palms Mayor and island native Jimmy Carroll lost everything to Hugo. Both his home and business were largely destroyed, but he considers himself one of the lucky ones because he had insurance. And while tourism began to slowly rebound after two years, the island took five years to fully recover, recounted Carroll. Carroll also added that, as bad as Hugo was, the islands were fortunate to have missed the worst of the storm surge — only getting hit with 12 feet compared to the 20 feet in McClellanville. Carroll further stated his concern that nonevents such as Hurricane Florence that skirted Charleston cause people to drop their guard and think, “We lived through a hurricane, so we don’t need to leave.” Echoing this sentiment, Sullivan’s Island Town Administrator Andy Benke admitted that, up until 1989, he had acquired a false sense of security when it came to hurricanes because previous storms he had seen threaten the islands before Hugo were nonevents. “I felt that storms either were not anything like the media reported, or they always made landfall somewhere else,” reflected Benke, who has worked for the Town since 2003. Benke continued, “The devastation when the sun rose Friday morning after Hugo is like nothing I could have ever imagined. The first few days after impact were Above: Ben Sawyer Bridge right after Hurricane Hugo. Below: Replacement bridge span on the Ben Sawyer post Hurricane Hugo. Photo courtesy of Bill Macchio. Photo courtesy of Bill Macchio.