Hugo Part 4 Friday later in the day… David Matthews, another CCSD librarian calls Friday morning just hours after the storm has passed to say that he’s heard the electricity may be off for a week or so. I answer that maybe I’ll have to leave. I don’t have enough water. I did fill the car with gas and can get out of town. He stayed also but up in North Charleston. He’s been watching a portable TV… battery operated. He tells me that he watched a weather forecast and saw the eye of the storm hit the peninsula square on and move up it. “A category 4 hurricane, “ I say in awe. He says, “a chance in a lifetime.” Maybe that’s really why I stayed. The adventurous me would not want to miss out. The Batesburg National Guard just got to my street minutes ago. Heavy equipment came rolling down the street shoving debris in front of it, clearing the street. I run out to watch backhoes and dump trucks, big mechanical teeth gobbling up the piles and depositing them in dump trucks. I am worried about my boat. It’s a 17’ Whaler but old, old, old. (I might make an observation that a friend later screamed at me when he heard what happened. “You took that boat out of the water? You had it insured for twice what it was worth. I can’t believe you saved that clunker!”) All of the other vehicles have been moved off the street but I have no where to put the boat. Limbs are scattered all around it. I am afraid the equipment will overturn it. I am not sure which I am worried about more, the boat or the water in it which we need for our toilets. One of the guardsmen comes over and asks, “Is that your boat?” When I answer yes he asks, “Don’t you have a plug?” I explain why I haven’t drained the water. I offer a shovel and they clean around it by hand. I ask them to get a big limb off of the air conditioner compressor. They also carry out the bags of trash I had collected this afternoon. They tell me that they were mobilized last night and have been here since 7 o’clock this morning clearing out the city. While we were holding our breaths and the storm raged, they were already on their way here. There’s a 6 o’clock curfew. At 7 I am noticing cars coming up the street and turning around in the MUSC parking lot. There’s a huge tree down at the end of the block. I stand in the yard and watch. The police soon come by and tell me to get back into the house until 7 am tomorrow morning. The sky is lit with stars tonight. There are no clouds, just deep velvet blue-black sky studded with large twinkling flecks. This is the first night I have seen stars like this in Charleston. Usually the city lights make the night sky a hazy grey. I go out into the rose garden in back and try to find the big dipper and other constellations I remembered from my childhood growing up in a rural area. The crickets are chirping vigorously. They weren’t blown away. I haven’t noticed them in years. The air conditioner usually drowns them out. Susan, another friend calls to see if I am OK. She lives in Summerville about 20 or 30 miles from here. She says that she thinks she and her daughter Kelly are in for a few boring weeks since the electricity is off there also and no one will be able to go to work or school during the interim. “Write,” I said. “Write about it so that you won’t forget.” She says that is a good idea, that things slip away so fast and soon you forget. Frances calls and says we have water. She had left a spigot on and water was flowing again. I ask if she thinks we can drink it. She says she is not going to chance it and we really have no way of knowing if it is safe unless we can find someone with a TV still going. There is no electricity to boil it. Still, I am not going to drain the boat just yet. Things are too uncertain. We may not have water tomorrow. I am going to take a bath and I am going to be happy even though it will be cold water and who knows what else! I am covered in insect spray and it is hot and muggy. I just have to trust the water is OK. Saturday, 23 September 1989 Two days after the storm The National Guard were here again today. They worked all day on the tree that had fallen over the street at the end of the block and the brick chapel. It was slow going. I suspect they will be here for quite some time. A huge water truck pulled up this morning at MUSC. Evidently the water is still not OK to drink. The hospital never lost power. They most likely have a lot of emergency generators. I wash the car off and drive it around the city. It is like a never ending montage of destruction. One house, one store says it all. How much is enough? It varies slightly from one house to the next, one pile of rubble to the next but block after block of twisted warped tin from roofs in the streets, street after street blocked with trees until a dullness creeps over and I am looking through glazed eyes. I was in shock yesterday. I took it all in. Today it is beginning to register. I see the Alabama Red Cross set up in a number of locations with long lines of people and for the first time I want to cry. Sobs are creeping up in my throat as the brevity of the situation sinks in. And then again, some houses look like they weren’t touched. It’s like a finger touched down here, here, and here. I stop by the newspaper office to get a paper. A woman is there listing off the days for which she wants papers. “I’m taking them back to Indianapolis,” she chirps. “Big deal,” I snap at her. “What?” she asked. “I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. I feel that our tragedy had become someone else’s souvenir. Tomorrow Part 5
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 19:45:31 +0000
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