Charleston Devastated : At Least 9 Dead as Hugo Levels Buildings, Floods Historic City : ‘Destruction Everywhere’ After Storm

Hurricane Hugo slammed into this 300-year-old city of antebellum mansions with winds of 135 m.p.h. today, sending a wall of water surging through its historic streets, leveling dozens of buildings and peeling others open “like a can opener.”

At least nine people in the Carolinas were killed before the storm moved on, leaving its fearsome mark on everything in its path for 100 miles.

“There’s just destruction everywhere,” Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley said after a tour of his ravaged city. “We have on our hands a degree of physical destruction that is unprecedented in anyone’s living memory.”

Looked Like a War Zone

Downtown Charleston looked like a war zone, and adding to the sense of unreality was a 52-foot yacht that was ripped from its moorings and tossed onto a main street.

Officials said eight people died in South Carolina and one in North Carolina. Brian Ellison, a spokesman for South Carolina Emergency Preparedness Division, said seven people died in counties surrounding Charleston.

Hugo killed another 23 people in the Caribbean earlier, bringing the death toll to 32.

Officials feared that the death toll in the Southeast would go much higher as the fate of people who ignored evacuation orders in low-lying areas was determined.

“It’s going to be miraculous if we don’t have a heavy loss of life,” Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. said.

‘Worst Disaster’

“It is the worst storm, the worst disaster, I’ve ever seen anywhere,” Campbell told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We’ve got a lot of people missing. We don’t know how bad it is.”

President Bush today declared a disaster area for seven counties in South Carolina. The order makes a variety of federal aid available, including temporary housing, low-cost loans for rebuilding and grants for repairing roads, bridges and other public structures.

Thirty major buildings in downtown Charleston were flattened, houses collapsed all over the city, and several people were trapped beneath a collapsed condominium complex, Elizabeth Tam of the Charleston County Police said early this morning.

Unreliable Communications

Police were at the scene, but no further details on injuries were available early this afternoon, in part because telephone communications to the city were unreliable.

The impact happened at the worst time in terms of flooding. Hugo carried with it a tidal surge, or a wall of water, 12 to 17 feet high that coincided with high tide at 2:13 a.m.

At least 20 boats washed ashore, Police Chief Reuben Greenberg said.

In one Charleston neighborhood, oak-lined streets bordered by restored antebellum mansions were under three feet of water, while the open-air market downtown was flooded with two feet of water. A massive wooden church door was tossed on the sidewalk.

In addition to flooding, fires from natural gas leaks erupted in Charleston, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861.

Details were still sketchy about flooding on the barrier islands off the coast, which bore the brunt of Hugo’s fury.

Seventy miles up the coast near Myrtle Beach, the elite vacation retreat community of Garden City Beach was smashed, officials said. It was among the communities under an evacuation order before Hugo hit.

“Garden City for all practical purposes is gone,” said M. L. Love, a Horry County administrator who toured the small, unincorporated resort town. Love said some larger buildings remained standing on the oceanfront, but otherwise destruction extended “as far as I could see.”

On Pawleys Island, south of Myrtle Beach, authorities said at least 14 houses had been washed away. It was unclear whether there had been anyone in the buildings in spite of evacuation orders. Three piers disappeared in North Myrtle Beach, Cherry Grove and Garden City.

At dawn, people got their first look at Hugo’s awesome destruction, and Charleston Police Maj. Edward Hethington said, “The scavengers started right in as they have done all along the path of this storm. They have ranged in age from 10 years old to 50 and they are from all areas of the city.”

By midday, police had jailed 27 people for looting and National Guard troops mobilized by the governor began patrolling streets, some of which were under several feet of water.

The mayors of Charleston and most coastal cities and towns ravaged by the storm declared dusk-to-dawn curfews.

After a direct hit on South Carolina, Hugo weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm at 6 a.m. by the National Weather Service. It headed northward through North Carolina and West Virginia on a path somewhat to the west of where forecasters had estimated, sparing coastal cities but bringing heavy rain to some inland areas.