At the Charleston Post-Courier, the evening began with collecting buckets and moving all the library furniture into the center of the library. Much of the night was spent wielding a flashlight as I directed the bucket brigades trying to collect and remove all the water coming into the library. As the winds of Hurricane Hugo raged outside the Post-Courier building, the library -- the safe haven -- was open for reporters and staff. It was a cool, quiet place -- serving not only for quick fact-finding of hur ricanes past, but also as a place to lay one's tired and stressed body, to grab a piece of candy on the way between newsrooms, or just to sit and peer out one of the windows -- watching and listening to the raging wind and rain, waiting for the sun to com e up, for this night to be over. I went outside during the eye of the storm, and it was so calm and clear that I could see stars twinkling.
The eerie light of morning did finally arrive. This librarian with back-pack on her shoulder went from the security of the building into a world of devastation. A street of ruins, of looters, of bus loads of police beginning the task of law and order. Mon tague Street, my street, hardly recognizable. I have a skylight where there wasn't one before. The patio was washed away in the surge, all the hardwood floors and appliances have to be replaced, the furniture has to be reupholstered, and the cat is insult ed. The recovery from Hugo began.
And now, into the eighth week of that recovery, the Post-Courier Library is coping with the zillion Hugo clippings and photos. Our files are bulging with stories on "historic debris," crumpled tin and slabs of slate from roofs, out-of-state contractors th at are now in all the historic old inns, the endless tales of FEMA and flood insurance and of Hugo Heroes. The huge jugs that were filled with rain water are gone; the camelias are blooming. The horse-drawn carriages are once again clip-clopping down the cobblestone streets. Charleston is an elegant survivor. Charlestonians have given new meaning to the phrases "candlelight dinner" and "candlelight tours" and this Charleston librarian has developed a keener sense of organizational skills due to the immens e volume of indexing of clips required by the "late unpleasantness."
Up the road in Columbia, SC, Dargan Richards was at The State Newspaper, running the Hugo Hotline and sidestepping copy editors from the Myrtle Beach and Charleston papers who came inland to put out parts of their papers. The State building has its own su bstation, so Dargan didn't lose power and could still operate the library fairly normally . . . except, with one day's notice and only one temporary employee, Dargan became the voice of the Hugo Hotline, a week-long call-in service for people who needed h elp or wanted to give help. On the first day the library fielded more than 200 calls from people as far away as New Mexico wanting to give assistance or Christmas presents to now-homeless children in Charleston and the coastal towns. Dargan said that peop le volunteered to take children into their homes until families could get resettled. Dargan also selected from general interest and answerable questions to put out Hugo Hotline columns in the daily paper -- on deadline.
In North Carolina, The Charlotte Observer weathered Hugo fairly well. Although many residents lost power, The Observer was able to keep operating. Sara Klemmer was vacationing in Pennsylvania at the time, much to her staff's dismay.
[Ed. Note: Elizabeth Whisnant (Newsday) also contributed to the Hugo story.]
| JoMC Library | UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication | UNC Homepage |
This page was created by Barbara P. Semonche and Sheila Denn. It was last updated May 1997. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to contact Barbara
here.