Building a little off of yesterday’s topic... yesterday and today mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo. Boy how time flies. I was living with my parents at the time (because I was only 10). We lived on James Island (my parents still live there). My Dad was working for SCE&G, so he had to go stay at the office when Hugo hit. Maybe the thing I remember the most about Hugo is that I hardly got to see Dad any in the months after it hit. I think he pretty much lived at the office for the first few weeks after Hugo. Even after that I would only see him for an hour or two each day because he had to work such long hours. I also remember how me, my Mom, and my sister evacuated to Summerville. Hey, we were getting the heck out of town. Summerville seemed a lot farther away from James Island back then. Not so much anymore. The only reason we left was they said the storm surge was going to be high (I can’t remember how high, but I remember it would have been higher than our house). So we packed our bags and headed up to Summerville where we stayed with Dr. (Jimmy) & Mrs. (Jan) Martin. The plan was to head up there for the night, ride this sucker out, and then get back home the next day (or maybe the day after). I remember Dr. Martin walked around all night with his video recorder (I wonder if he still has that tape?). I remember walking around their neighborhood the next day and seeing a two story house split in half by a tree. When I say ‘split in half’, I mean split from top to bottom. Trees were everywhere. Houses were in bad shape... yet some houses looked like they weren’t even touched. It was odd (to me, at least). I remember when we got to go back home, just seeing all of the trees on the ground. I can remember our back yard had a lot of trees in it before Hugo. A large majority of those trees didn’t make it. It was kind of a shock. I’ve got some pictures that I’ll try to put on here of how our yard looked post Hugo. I think there are two pictures of yard debris on the side of the road in front of our house. It looked that way for months. I can’t remember how long we were without power, but it felt like forever. We had a generator, so that helped. Our house didn’t get too much damage, so that was good. It could have been worse. Some friends who lived down the street had pluff mud all in their house. That was bad. Considering how close our house was from Charleston Harbor (about a street away), I don’t remember there being any water damage. Anyway, that’s my Hugo story.