UPDATE : Hurricane Hugo Still Howls in the Memory : Three years later most of the damage on the Carolina coastline has been repaired, but other effects linger.

When Hurricane Hugo’s cruel winds ripped this little fishing village apart three years ago, more than a few people wondered if the town would recover.

“We were pretty much ground zero,” Mayor Rutledge Leland recalled recently. Boats were flung onto the shore, houses were blown into the streets. Many homes that remained in place lost their roofs or were flooded with murky salt water mixed with sewage.

McClellanville has been built back, but deep-rooted emotional and financial scars remain for the people here and in the other coastal communities that bore Hugo’s fury.

Residents have new bills; insurance paid only about a half of the $6-billion loss, according to a study by the University of South Carolina.

And residents shoulder new worries. Many say the hurricane made them feel like crime victims, unable to control what happens in their lives. They also fear every weather report that shows hurricanes forming in the Atlantic, as Hurricane Andrew did in August.

“To outward appearance, everything looks pretty much as it did before the hurricane,” Leland said, surveying his new dock where boats full of shrimp were being unloaded for his wholesale fish business. “But this hurricane will always affect us.”

Before Andrew smashed into the Florida and Louisiana coastlines during the week of Aug. 24, Hugo was the country’s most destructive natural disaster. Packing 135 m.p.h. winds on the evening of Sept. 21, 1989, Hurricane Hugo swept a 19-foot tidal surge onto the South Carolina coast, battering islands and cities from Charleston to Pawleys Island, 100 miles to the north.

Nearly 70,000 people were left homeless, and 18,000 miles of roads were chewed up. The storm had been expected to hit Charleston dead-on, but turned northward and struck McClellanville. When the hurricane moved ashore, extensive damage rained down on cities as far inland as Charlotte, N.C., 200 miles from the ocean.

Hundreds of people came here to help, thousands more sent food, clothing and money. But in the weeks and months of mopping up that followed, homeowners also found that there was always someone ready to take advantage of them, mostly unscrupulous contractors.

“I have three close friends, each of whom got cheated out of $25,000,” said Linda Austin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who has discussed on her weekly radio talk show the stresses and strains of dealing with hurricane aftermath. In each case, she said, the contractor did not pay the subcontractors who did the work. The subcontractors ended up attaching liens on the houses.

Other people advanced money for materials, but never saw the contractor again.

“There was a lot of cheating going on,” said Mayor Carmen Bunch of the Isle of Palms, a barrier island north of Charleston. Half of the homes were damaged, and some people have not finished repairs. Some repairs were delayed due to haggling with insurance companies.

But there was very little looting. In Charleston, with half a million residents, the police chief promised swift and tough punishment for anyone who was caught looting.

“The community really pulled together,” said Dan Ravenel, who lives in his ancestral home in the heart of Charleston’s historic district. The 196-year-old Federal-style home withstood the high wind, but could not hold up to the aged elm tree with an 18-foot diameter that crashed onto a corner of the house.

Ravenel said it took a year and $300,000 to restore his home.

Here in McClellanville, many of the 500 residents now face mortgages and other loans where before the storm they had none.

“I now owe a lot of money,” said Leland, who not only had to gut the inside of his home and start over, but also had to rebuild his dock and the building that houses his business. He lost one boat, and fishermen who work for him lost 20 more. His losses totaled about $300,000, he said.

Explained Leland, “The financial burden will always affect me, what I can put away for my childrens’ college education, my retirement.”

Most everyone here says a lasting effect of the storm has been a change in attitude.

“The things that were important before the storm are not now,” said a 43-year-old real estate broker. “A near-death experience awakens you. Being important in everyone’s eyes is no longer important.”