Carolina People Display Survival Skill After Storm

The people of the Carolinas, brought to ruin by Hurricane Hugo, jury-rigged their lives back together with pluck and ingenuity Saturday as the storm sputtered north, lost its punch as well as its name--and shut its evil eye for good.

National Guardsmen by the hundreds patrolled streets. Police arrested at least 119 people for pillaging and breaking curfew. Authorities counted 18 dead in the Carolinas, two in Virginia and one in New York--bringing Hugo’s weeklong toll to at least 48. One baby died in North Carolina when Hugo hurled a tree into his crib.

But two babies were born in Charlotte while Hugo was at full shriek, one at a hospital--but the other at home, while her 12-year-old sister and 9-year-old brother held flashlights. And this was the spunk that distinguished victims of the hurricane as they staggered back to their feet. Officials said it would take nearly a month to restore power throughout the region. It will take weeks to remove the debris. The damage estimate rose to more than $3 billion. South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. said it would take years to rebuild.

Meantime, necessity bred patience and originality.

Residents queued up in lines a hundred people long for food, water and gasoline. They shared chain saws to cut debris. Three nuns braved the storm in a convent on a low-lying island. After it passed, they borrowed a butane camp stove to cook.

Some residents used a radio talk show to communicate with each other.

In one curious symbiosis, a television satellite truck lent its power generator to a filling station to pump gas in exchange for enough diesel fuel to broadcast the news back home to Chattanooga, Tenn.

Some unorthodox attempts to survive failed. The Coast Guard said it found the bodies of a man and woman who had lashed themselves to a 44-foot catamaran tied to a dock on an intercoastal waterway. A spokesman said the man took with him $24,000 in cash. Both apparently drowned.

Flashes of Humor

Occasionally, destruction and sorrow gave way to humor.

A policeman giving a motorist directions on Saturday said: “Follow this street and turn left at the cabin cruiser on the roadway. You can’t miss it.”

There were reports that greedy entrepreneurs were setting astronomical prices for basic goods, including one man who peddled small bags of ice for $10, another who sold chain saws for $600, a merchant who overpriced generators by $800 and a gasoline station owner who demanded $4.50 a gallon.

Charleston issued an emergency ordinance banning price gouging.

Any price “higher than pre-hurricane prices” would bring 30 days in jail and a $200 fine, Mayor Joseph P. Riley said.

Some residents showed signs of desperation.

When one of the few operating radio stations reported that dry ice would be distributed at two shopping malls, thousands of people lugging ice chests formed lines--and became unruly when police told them there would be no ice.

“Ice is a luxury, and I’m not in the business of providing luxuries,” explained Charleston Police Chief Ruben Greenberg, who said he had ordered the ice delivered to local hospitals to refrigerate medicine. “Nobody needs cold Cokes.”

Across the Ashley River, traffic snarled at a major intersection after a broadcast report that gasoline would be available at a filling station there.

“Somebody put it on the stupid radio,” complained station owner Roger Durbin, who had yet to hook up an emergency generator to operate his pumps.

“Whoever did it ought to be shot.”

But by and large, people met the challenge with forbearance and imagination.

Years of Overbuilding

In places, the destruction was so complete that some saw the possibility of adopting new standards that could reverse the effects of years of overbuilding and resulting beach erosion.

“This could be an exercise in urban renewal in the proper way,” said John Rush, a Myrtle Beach businessman and city planner.

“Everything at the beach was developed out of greed, ego and strange financial interests, and that smashed out all hope of good sense,” Rush said. “We now have a chance to change those conditions.”

Rush and others said hotel owners and homeowners in Garden City and Surfside City, where destruction was widespread, should join together to build larger, better-planned structures at least a block in from the beach.

“That’s radical from a city planning point of view,” Rush said. “But we could create a boulevard, better amenities and an environmentally sound community.”

The scope of hardship ranged far beyond Charleston.

Shortages of food, ice and gasoline were reported as far as Columbia, 110 miles west, and Sumter, 60 miles north, said Larry Ladue, an aide to Gov. Campbell.

A state government source, who asked not to be identified, said the main generating station supplying electricity to Charleston had been destroyed. There was no confirmation from power company officials, but Mayor Riley said: “The entire power system is down. Every element of it is down. There is no power this side of Orangeburg, 75 miles away.”

“We just have to go back to primitive living, I guess,” said North Charleston Mayor John Bourne.

Because of the power blackout, some of the longest lines were for dry ice and generators, which people hoped to use to rescue freezer-loads of food from certain spoilage in the steamy coastal climate.

Waits for Generators

“God knows when there’ll be fresh food,” said Ashley Blauvelt, one of the hundreds who waited up to four hours for generators, newly arrived aboard four semi-trucks.

The generators were part of all kinds of aid pouring into the Charleston metropolitan area. Caravans also brought food, water and equipment to clear the rubble--and scattered stores began to open their darkened aisles.

Jack Parker, a manager of a Piggly Wiggly store, said he had not planned to open up because he had run out of bread, charcoal and canned fuel.

But he did have canned goods. “We came in to clean up,” he said, “and then people started knocking on the door asking to shop.” So Parker dispatched his wife and daughter to the cash registers, had his son guard the front door.

He let shoppers in--five at a time.

For everybody, lack of electricity was the biggest problem. Without it, cash registers and household appliances would not work, street lights and bridges did not operate, and schools and banks will not open.

“You can’t run computers,” said bank teller Cindy Parker. “We have no manual method. Without electricity there is no security. We can’t even open the vault.” And without automatic teller machines, those who had not stocked their wallets before the storm found themselves having to borrow cash from friends and neighbors.

“I’ve got lots of plastic,” said Cindy Duggan, a Charleston resident, “but no one will take it--because the computers are down.”

Mayor Riley said that hospitals would be given top priority for restoring power--but he could not say when that might happen. Even with emergency assistance from utility crews from five nearby states, power company officials were unwilling to make any commitments about a timetable.

After hospitals, the mayor said his priority for electricity would be to give it to the water company, sewage disposal companies, and then gas stations and food stores.

The lack of electricity for water purification left much of the Charleston metropolitan area without safe drinking water.

Gov. Campbell said sanitation had become a concern throughout the state.

Officials at the South Carolina Emergency Preparedness office urged people, particularly in coastal communities, to boil tap water before drinking it.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. said that more than 300,000 customers were without power, including almost 140,000 in the Charleston area. The emergency preparedness office put the statewide number at more than half a million. It called the blackout the worst ever in South Carolina.

After a lack of electricity, scattered outbreaks of violence were the area’s second worst problem.

Fights Erupt

Tensions in a five-hour line to buy gasoline generators from a Honda dealership erupted in seven separate fights, and six squad cars of police officers patrolled the parking lot warily for most of Saturday afternoon.

In North Charleston, a housing project was trashed by “undesirables running wild” during the first two nights following the storm, said housing authority director Ronald Gooding. At one point, he said, individuals set fire to the guard tower designed to keep drug dealers out of the project.

“I had to pull my gun to get them out of there,” he said.

There were at least 25 arrests in Charleston alone for looting and curfew violations. Two coastal islands, Sullivans and the Isle of Palms, remained under martial law. The islands were closed even to residents amid reports of heavy looting.

National Guardsmen patrolling the island reportedly fired some shots, but it was not known whether any looters had been injured.

Islands Cut Off

The barrier islands, home to 11,000 people, had been cut off from the mainland since the storm destroyed two access bridges. Officials said buildings were continuing to collapse and reported significant water-contamination problems.

Water also was a problem at Charleston International Airport.

There seemed little chance that even limited commercial service would be restored until early next week.

The airport terminal lost much of its roof in the storm.

Linda Lombard, chairwoman of the Charleston County Council toured the building Saturday and said she walked in water “inside the entire airport.”

Rescue efforts continued throughout the day as workers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings. Searchers moved into previously flooded and remote areas. And the Coast Guard searched the ocean and intercoastal waterways for at least 16 missing fishing and pleasure boats.

Disaster relief officials also reported for the first time that there were missing people on land as well, but they said they could not give a number.

Death Toll May Climb

One official said he expected the Charleston death toll to climb.

As residents awaited word about the missing, a television station and two radio outlets mounted a venture to restore news broadcasts.

Others were vexed by more run-of-the-mill worries: food and money.

Without refrigeration or electric stoves, many had to turn to peanut butter, tuna fish and other canned goods that could be eaten cold.

“I’m so tired of deviled ham,” moaned Frank Jones of Summerville.

For residents equipped to cope with the storm and its aftermath, however, not all was toil and trouble. In some areas, neighbors banded together to use outdoor gas grills to cook thawing freezer-meat in what one resident called “forced barbecuing.”

“With all the backyard smoke rising up around my neighborhood,” said Austin Roumillat of North Charleston, “you would have thought it was the Fourth of July.”

Staff writers Robert L. Jackson in Columbia, S.C.; Melissa Healy in Charleston, S.C., and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

HURRICANE RELIEF

Relief supplies began to arrive but Virgin Islands residents said bureaucratic bungling had worsened their plight. Page 20