Hurricane Hugo

Identification Disastrous storm

Date September 9-25, 1989

Place Formed off the west coast of Africa; struck the northern Caribbean and the East Coast of North America

When it struck North America and the Caribbean in 1989, Hurricane Hugo became the most devastating and costly hurricane then on record. It reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale and wrought havoc throughout the Caribbean before striking the United States. The storm killed at least seventy people and caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.

In 1959, Hurricane Gracie, a Category 3 storm, made landfall near Beaufort, South Carolina, wreaked some havoc but swiftly weakened, and disappeared into Georgia. At that time, the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina were thinly populated, inhabited primarily by African American descendants of freed slaves. From the 1960’s onward, virtually all of coastal South Carolina—except for an area north of the Isle of Palms to Pawley’s Island—witnessed massive development: golf courses, gated communities, and tourist destinations. For three decades, hurricane season brought a brush or two, but nothing of significance to remind natives or visitors of the dangers posed by the powerful storms. Preservation of nature’s defenses against storms—sand dunes and sea oats, for example—was often overlooked in the building frenzy.

Thirty years after Gracie, following several years of drought, good summer rains refilled lakes, and September brought more of the same. On September 9, a tropical wave moved off Cape Verde, Africa, developing into a tropical storm two days later. Hugo became a hurricane on September 13 and intensified rapidly, becoming a Category 5 storm—a storm with sustained winds of at least 156 miles per hour—while it was still one thousand miles from the North American continent. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reconnaissance aircraft flew into Hugo on September 15 and discovered sustained wind speeds of 190 miles per hour and a barometric pressure of 918 millibars. Weakening slightly to Category 4 when its highest sustained wind speeds dipped to 140 miles per hour, between September 17 and September 19 Hugo passed over the Caribbean Islands of Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Dominica, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico with devastating fury.

Puerto Rico left Hugo much diminished in strength, but the Gulf Stream quickly restored its power to Category 4. Doppler radar made hurricane tracking easier, but it was clear only that Hugo would strike somewhere along the Georgia-South Carolina coast. The residents of Savannah, Georgia, were ordered to evacuate, but a northward hitch by Hugo turned the storm directly toward Charleston. During the night of the September 23, packing sustained winds of 138 miles per hour, Hugo passed over the city. On the windward side of the hurricane, a storm surge in excess of twenty feet inundated the tiny fishing village of McClellanville, among others. The winds virtually destroyed most of the mature longleaf pines and palmettos in the Francis Marion National Forest, snapping their tops off about twenty feet above ground. Sadly, despite having deep root systems, the live oaks of the forest were also devastated, because the soggy ground resulting from earlier rainfall allowed their roots simply to pop out of the ground. Hugo moved swiftly through South Carolina and was still a Category 1 storm by the time it reached Charlotte, two hundred miles inland. Racing northward, the storm finally disappeared over eastern Canada on September 25, but the effects of its devastation would be felt for years.

Impact

Hugo’s destruction was, at the time, the most costly in recorded history, resulting in its name being permanently retired. Had the storm continued on its original course, damages would have been far greater, given the enormous buildup along the coast from Charleston to Savannah. As it was, the worst of the storm pummeled small towns and a national forest. Caribbean islands in Hugo’s path suffered terribly, and agriculture in eastern South Carolina was essentially wiped out. Significantly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to whom U.S. senator Fritz Hollings referred as a “bunch of bureaucratic jackasses,” was woefully unprepared for managing assistance following the disaster. The hurricane thus resulted in a greater concern for disaster preparedness, especially at the local level. It also helped bring about passage of proposed legislation to protect barrier islands, and it convinced more people living in hurricane-prone regions to take seriously evacuation orders for their communities.

Bibliography

Boone, C. F. Frank. . . . and Hugo Was His Name. Charleston, S.C.: Boone, 1989. An account by a reporter for Charleston’s News and Courier regarding the impact of Hugo.

Elsner, James B., and A. Birol Kara. Hurricanes of the North Atlantic: Climate and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Provides climatology data for the twentieth century, analysis of hurricane climate research, and discussion of hurricane information, including dangers posed to catastrophe insurance.

Fraser, Walter J. Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Shore. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. A history of more than eighty hurricanes and tropical storms along the Georgia-South Carolina seaboard from 1686.

Golden Joseph H., Riley M. Chung, and Earl J. Baker. Hurricane Hugo: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and South Carolina—September 17-22, 1989. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994. Important coverage of Hugo’s impact from formation to termination.

Moore, Jamie W., with Dorothy P. Moore. Island in the Storm: Sullivan’s Island and Hurricane Hugo. Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2006. A College of Charleston history professor’s account of Hugo, focusing on its social, economic, and environmental effects.

Simon, Seymour. Hurricanes. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Succinct, general introduction to hurricanes.

Tait, Lawrence S., ed. Beaches: Lessons of Hurricane Hugo. Tallahassee: Florida Shore & Beach Preservation Association, 1990. Discusses the problem of and possible solutions to beach erosion.

Trimnal, Katherine J. Photographer’s Notebook: Hurricane Hugo, September 21-22, 1989. Limited ed. Charleston, S.C.: n.p., 1991. Collection of photographs documenting the hurricane’s destruction.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hurricane Hugo: South Carolina Forest Land Research and Management Related to the Storm. Asheville, N.C.: Southern Research Station, 1996. Hugo’s high winds destroyed most of the mature trees in a swath from the coast to north of Charlotte. This report evaluates the impact of that loss.