Hurricane Cost May Top $8 Billion, Panel Is Told

When it’s all counted up, the damage from Hurricane Hugo may exceed $8 billion, the director of the National Hurricane Center said Thursday.

Robert Sheets said the insurance industry is currently estimating its losses at $4 billion. “In the past we have found that total losses get close to two to three times the insurance loss,” he told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

“I’ve never seen such massive damage as with Hurricane Hugo,” said Sheets, who has toured the damaged regions, including South Carolina’s coastal zones.

Sheets said the nation was somewhat lucky with Hugo, because the storm struck on the night of Sept. 21 in such a way that the most powerful wind and waves slammed into the Francis Marion National Forest, an area with few human residents.

If the full force had struck a major metropolitan area, the destruction would have been much greater, he said.

Sheets’ comments came at a hearing on modernization of the National Weather Service, and he pointed out that improved weather radars planned for the future will make hurricane forecasting easier and more accurate.

Meanwhile, three railroad boxcars of plywood from the Pacific Northwest arrived Thursday in Charleston, S.C., in what officials called the largest single donation of building materials since the hurricane struck.

But as shipments of relief supplies begin to taper off five weeks after the storm, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said he is concerned about meeting the needs of a rebuilding effort that could take as long as two years.

The storm destroyed 3,437 homes and caused major damage to 13,757 in the Charleston area, said Howard Chapman, who is coordinating the city’s relief effort.

The boxcars of plywood were shipped by a group known as the Oregon Lands Coalition, which represents 10 organizations in Washington and Oregon.