Many Are Still Feeling Pain of Hugo’s Blow

Anna Williams is suffering. She has an enlarged heart, high blood pressure and a home wrecked by Hurricane Hugo.

A bedroom chest battered by floodwater crumpled when she tried to move it, you can see the ground through the floor, the furnace doesn’t work any more, the roof is only temporarily patched, and cold weather is coming.

Williams, a soft-spoken 57-year-old widow, surveyed the scene from a worn sofa in her living room. She is unable to work because of poor health and could not afford insurance before the Sept. 21 hurricane. Now, she has little hope of ever fully recovering from the storm.

“That Friday morning,” she whispered, “was just like the world had come to an end.”

Two months after Hugo hit this region, stories such as hers are surprisingly widespread.

In Charleston, the streets are mostly cleaned up and the city is abuzz with workmen repairing elegant old mansions. But, behind many facades, agony reigns. Structural damage, leaky roofs and flooded furniture abound.

Upper-crust Charlestonians are hard pressed to find craftsmen to repair their homes, building materials are in extremely short supply--Williams cannot even get sheets of plywood to patch her floor--and insurance claims stack up, unresolved.

“I’ve had three contractors come to my home and I haven’t had one estimate,” said Dane Fitzmorris, a Charleston woman who owns a historic home near downtown. “Winter’s coming and our houses are opened up like sieves. What are we going to do?”

This is Hugo’s legacy. The storm killed 35 people, savaged Charleston and tiny coastal communities like Tibwin and caused at least $4 billion in damage. Now it continues to take an inestimable toll on the lives of countless people.

Both rich and poor face the bureaucratic red tape and the difficulties of getting work done and, say experts, newly emerging psychological problems involving post-traumatic stress.

Fortunately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has extended the deadline for applying for federal grants and low-interest loans until Dec. 20. At the same time, the approach of cold weather has injected a new sense of urgency into South Carolinians’ recovery problems.

Williams and Fitzmorris share the pain of having lost personal treasures, of having their lives disrupted and their homes turned into strange, unrecognizable structures. But Fitzmorris, who has insurance and a job as manager of a restaurant, can at least expect the nightmare to end sometime. Williams and many like her cannot.

Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said that, in the best areas, hotels and restaurants are making the city “shine again,” but, in poor sections of Charleston and in rural areas, the path to recovery will be “a long, hard road.”

Harrison Rearden, deputy commissioner of South Carolina’s Department of Social Services, said now that the glare of publicity about Hugo has passed, “I am much concerned that there is a plethora of people out there still suffering . . . the aged and ill and poor who have not been taken care of. The public quickly becomes immune to that and drives by and doesn’t see it.”

The landscape still bears the scars of one of the worst hurricanes in memory. Along the storm’s path, miles and miles of once-tall pines now stand chopped low, as if struck by a giant karate blow. Boats still sit incongruously on roadsides and in yards. Giant tree trunks sprawl on their sides, sometimes providing exotic playgrounds for children. And everywhere, house windows still are striped with tape that warded off the fury of the wind.

In Awendaw, Hugo’s 140-m.p.h. winds swept away a two-story section of Isiah and Christine Manigault’s home, leaving them with only a fraction of their former living space.

“It just went flop,” said Mrs. Manigault, drawing an arc in the air with her hand. Some of their belongings “blew into the field and some blew into my neighbor’s back yard,” she said. They had no insurance.

The Manigaults are still waiting for word on their Federal Emergency Management Agency application and, meanwhile, have installed a temporary roof on their tiny blue house. In the yard, Manigault has set up a work space with a floodlight. At night, after leaving his job as a carpenter, he works to rebuild his home.

In small rural communities, stories have spread about how slow the federal emergency agency has been to provide financial assistance, discouraging many people from applying.

A huge uprooted tree flew across the road and slammed into Prince Gillard’s home in Mt. Pleasant, damaging the porch and roof. He has tried to patch his roof but has refused to seek federal emergency assistance. “They give you so much trouble,” he said, “I didn’t want to bother with it. They ask when your mama was born. I don’t know when my mama was born.”

Anna Williams has sought Federal Emergency Management Agency help, so far without success. “All these different programs give you nothing but a runaround,” she said.

Agency officials defend their effort. “The thing that is often overlooked is the magnitude of the situation we are dealing with,” said Bill McAda, a spokesman in Washington. “We are not trying to get away from our responsibilities.”

He said he made a study of disasters during the last 10 years and found an average of 25 a year, leading to about 3,000 applications for aid and costing the federal government about $30 million.

“With Hugo and the California earthquake,” he said, “we are talking about applications from perhaps 350,000 people, and we anticipate a federal outlay in excess of $2 billion.”

McAda said that the agency has already written almost $80 million in checks for temporary housing and family grants. The cost of clearing debris in the Charleston area will amount to $62 million, he said. He called the payments “not a bad start.”

Nevertheless, the agency continues to draw heated criticism from officials in this state. Mayor Riley asserted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be under the Army, where its response to emergencies would be “immediate.”

Disputes over the agency seem almost tame compared to those centering on insurance claims.

Mary Brown, a 74-year-old retired teacher with diabetes, asthma and a bad heart, owns a white frame house in a plain neighborhood in Charleston. When her roof blew off in the storm, rain poured in, damaging furnishings on the second floor. Plastic still covers the roof.

To her surprise, Brown was told by her insurance company that the contents of her home were not covered. Disputing the company’s ruling, she showed a visitor the policy, which said rain damage would not be covered “unless the direct force of wind or hail damages the building, causing an opening in a roof or wall and the rain . . . enters through this opening.”

Clearly, that means she should be covered, said Brown, who complained about what she called the “tricky policy.”

Joseph Barnett, an official in the state insurance commissioner’s office, acknowledged that the storm has strained the insurance claims mechanism. He attributes it partly to inexperienced claims adjusters. In disasters like the hurricane, adjusters often are dispatched from around the country to expedite claims; but, said Barnett, “all of a sudden all of our California adjusters were gone,” back to that state to process earthquake claims.

Other experienced adjusters, whom Barnett calls “storm troopers,” finished their tours in South Carolina. “Now,” he said, “we’ve got a second wave in here who probably haven’t had as much experience, and the (claims) are not quite as easy to settle now.”

Even if they can get their claims settled, many find it impossible to find someone to make repairs.

“All the big contractors in the city are busy,” Brown said. “They might not get to me for two years.”

And, once homeowners find a contractor, they must be concerned about getting ripped off by price-gougers and con artists who collect down payments and never return to do the work. As James Brannock, executive vice president of the South Carolina Home Builders Assn., put it: “With a carcass this big, you have a lot of vultures.”

Martie Hoffmann and Joel Gourio of Isle of Palms said a man from Jacksonville, Fla., offered to repair their roof for $250 a day if they would also pay his wife’s dental-technician salary and allow them to stay in their home while he worked on the roof. They said no.

In some upscale Charleston neighborhoods, construction workers are recruited right off the street. On King Street, a pudgy, middle-aged man stood on a sidewalk, imploring a worker who was repairing the roof of a three-story brick home. “I’ll be through here at about 2,” the worker shouted over the whine of a table saw. “Then I’ll come over and see what you got.”

Worker shortages have affected cities all over the South as many experienced craftsmen leave their jobs to come here.

In Atlanta, for example, G. Boake Moore, president of a home renovation firm, said several of his employees have “suddenly picked up and left for Charleston,” leaving him short-handed. When his best carpenter threatened to leave, saying he could earn $20 an hour there, Moore said, “I had to give it to him.”

On Battery Street in Charleston, Buddy Davis, a heating and air-conditioning worker from Savannah, Ga., sat next to an 8-foot oleander bush and took a lunch break from his work on a huge home facing the bay. “There’s plenty of work here,” he said. “The hurricane was a bad way to get it.”

Not all construction workers find the going easy here. Some wind up living in tents or in their trucks because the area is experiencing a severe housing shortage.

Gene Roberts, a woodworker from Stephenville, Tex., now working in Mt. Pleasant, said he slept in his 1971 pickup truck for four weeks before friends took up a collection to rent him an apartment.

How long will he stay in South Carolina? “At least two years,” he said.

Roberts said he will sharpen his woodworking skills in South Carolina by working on the state’s many historic buildings.

Others also see opportunity in tragedy. Riley said the rebuilding can be used “to substantially upgrade the housing of poor people, which is a national disgrace.”

Hardly anyone is counting on the federal government to do this. Riley said he expects volunteer home builders to come in and help. In some communities, whole neighborhoods have contracted for the services of a single contractor; others have exchanged services among themselves.

“It’s been family helping family,” said Robert Coaxum, who had come from Columbia, S.C., to help repair his mother’s home in Awendaw. While supervising the cutting of a beige carpet on her front lawn, he said: “You’re never going to regroup totally, so you just try to roll with it and make the best of it.”

Sometimes, a homeowner who lives in a historic house finds an expensive catch during rebuilding: Repairs to designated historic buildings, such as roofing, must pass inspection to ensure that they maintain the structure’s original character.

Although some newcomers may disparage such tradition as fastidious, Establishment Charlestonians argue that keeping the character of historic old buildings ensures that the city will keep its growing tourist trade.

Pat Mellen, director of a restoration project at Charleston’s Preservation Society, said that city officials are seeking extra funds to help poor people comply with the renovation requirements. Mellen said he has also sought out contractors to help homeowners get their property back in shape.

“I’ve lost all semblance of Southern pride,” he said. “I get out and beg every day.”

Coping with Hugo’s aftermath takes many forms. Some people seem matter-of-fact, almost casual when describing their losses.

One, Joseph Jenkins, stood on the sidewalk of his modest home near downtown Charleston, pointing out what happened: roof damage, windows blown out, ceiling cracked, water “all the way to the dashboard” of his car. But Jenkins, a car-wash employee, seemed unfazed. Shrugging, he said, the hurricane “didn’t make it much worse than it was. That’s why you save money, so when times like this hit, you have it.”

But the storm has worn many South Carolinians’ nerves thin.

Several experts said they expect a surge in drug abuse, including alcohol, and psychological counselors are gearing up for heavy traffic.

Spokesmen at the American Psychological Assn. said that as many as 20% of those involved in a disaster “can go on to develop full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder, the clinical condition characterized by flashbacks, hyperarousal, withdrawal and other psychological disturbances.”

Mellen said he is “holding hands of a lot of people who are hurting, teaching them patience, how to live with your contractor and not commit suicide.”

Leaving the scene of the tragedy is how many are dealing with it, but Mellen ridiculed this approach. “The yuppies are leaving,” he said. “They don’t want to be bothered with problems. They only want successes.”

Anna Williams thought about leaving. “I wanted to get away,” she said, staring at her mildewed curtains and water-stained wall. “But, if I go, I’d have to come back.”

Staff researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.