Unlike tropical storms that seem to wander around the Atlantic, Hurricane Hugo, born in the Cape Verde Islands in September 1989, seemed to know its destination. After slamming the Caribbean Islands with 190 mph winds, Hugo began a direct course toward South Carolina. With a 250-mile circumference and a 40-mile wide eye, it could not miss.
Forecasters began their warnings early, and civic leaders urged coastal residents, particularly in the Charleston area, to leave for higher ground. The warnings became so ominous that only a few of the most determined residents remained as the Category 4 storm bore down on the South Carolina coast. Those who stayed were asked to leave next of kin information to authorities so they could claim the bodies after the storm.
Those of us as far as inland as Clarendon County expected heavy winds and heavy rainfall, but few of us were prepared for Thursday night and the sights of daylight on Friday, Sept. 22.
Sherry and I, along with our three children, walked around the debris-strewn streets of Summerton in a daze. We first noticed when we walked out on the porch that the landscape had drastically changed. Across our street in our neighbor’s yard, a stand of large pine trees was simply gone, blown down or broken by the heavy winds. We made our way to Sherry’s sister’s house a few blocks away, and it was then that I noticed a large forest of hardwood trees on the edge of the town limits were blown down.
“The trees are gone!” I exclaimed to Sherry. She looked at me as if I were absurdly stating the obvious.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “The trees are gone.” Like me, she soon realized that if the forests that we managed and depended on for our living had been as significantly damaged as the trees in Summerton, the trees were indeed gone.
Later in the day, as we picked our way along U.S. 301 to Manning, my worst fears were confirmed. All along the way, large pine trees were snapped off, bowed, or blown down. The forests, homes, and businesses that had once been shaded with large trees were now littered with broken trees, some piercing roofs, some laying across power lines and others in the edge of streets and roads. Top heavy hardwoods were simply tipped over.
Hugo, coming ashore between Charleston and McLellanville, had driven a dagger-shaped wedge of destruction that did not end until it reached Charlotte, North Carolina. The forests in both Clarendon and Sumter Counties were among those heaviest hit.
The next days and months were filled with blessings, toil, sweat, and tears. The blessings were that there were relatively few lives lost, despite the ferocity of the storm. And the blessings also came as help began to pour in from across the nation. The tears would quickly give way to toil and sweat, as we had no choice but to move on with our lives.
Those of us in the forest industry learned that, in some cases, about 95 percent of the sawtimber size trees that we had managed for decades were destroyed or severely damaged. Gov. Carroll Campbell, along with others in the forestry community, quickly organized the Governor’s Forest Disaster Salvage Council. This group of state, federal, private industry representatives, and landowners set about to determine how much damage there was to the forests in the state.
It was soon estimated that about a 10-year supply of trees for the forest industry was lying, bent and broken. An estimated $10 billion of potential forest products used to make lumber and paper were predicted to simply rot in the woods. Damage to Clarendon County’s pine sawtimber stands was estimated at 38 percent, while hardwood loss was 70 percent.
Neither the logging force to move that much timber to mills, nor mills that could absorb that much production in a timely manner existed. The task force, of which I was a member, set a goal of salvaging 25 percent of the downed timber. We knew that especially with pine trees, quick salvage was immediately needed.
Loggers from across all areas of South Carolina moved in to the damaged counties, as did loggers from across the Southeast. Mills geared up to increase their storage space and in some cases, sprinkler systems were installed on log yards. When newly harvested trees are kept wet for 24 hours per day, the process of decay is greatly slowed. The newly formed task force contacted other mills outside of South Carolina, and efforts were made to move timber to other areas where possible.
Economics, of course, played a major part in the salvage, and the twisted and tangled timber was more difficult to harvest and often required that the damaged portions of the tree be cut and left in the woods. The prices for timber fell by 90 percent in some cases. Needless to say, landowners were upset and disappointed at the tremendous loss. However, many considered themselves fortunate to receive anything as smaller tracts were simply bypassed.
For forest landowners, both the S.C. Forestry Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture offered cost-share assistance to both establish firebreaks and to aid in reforestation. One of the main concerns, which never materialized, was that with all of the debris from the forests on the ground during the fire season, the chance of frequent and severe forest fires would be great. Fortunately, landowners and the public helped to lower the risk by refraining from woodland burning.
1989 gave way to the final decade of the 20th Century and found us striving to return to some sort of normalcy. It was a relief to occasionally travel outside of the hurricane area to see what normal looked like. As 1991 approached, salvage efforts began to sharply taper and the Forest Disaster Salvage Council announced that about 14 percent of the downed timber had been recovered. Reforestation efforts continued for several years, and landowners, as well as Mother Nature, implemented a large reforestation effort.
As a tribute to the resiliency of the Southern forests, in 2006, Grant Forest Products announced the location of oriented strand board (OSB) plants in Clarendon and Allendale counties. These counties were chosen because of the abundance of pine trees that could be used to make OSB for the booming housing industry. The total investment in both plants was expected to be over $470 million.
Unfortunately, the next blow to the forest industry, not only in Clarendon County, but nationwide, was the economic down-turn of 2007-09. Unfortunately, Grant Forest Products was unable to complete its plant in Clarendon County, but in 2010 the Georgia-Pacific Corporation purchased the assets of Grant and completed the plant. Loads of trees from Hurricane Hugo reforestation efforts can now be seen going into the Georgia-Pacific plant located along U.S. 521 north of Alcolu.
For those of us old enough to remember, our lives will be marked as “before Hugo” and “after Hugo.” Once you have lived through a hurricane, you are never comfortable when there is a storm brewing somewhere in the south Atlantic.
Dwight Stewart is the owner and operator of Dwight Stewart and Associates LLC, 26 E. Boyce St. in Manning.