Saturday, September 22, 2012

23 Years Ago...

Hurricane Hugo came ashore in South Carolina.

Well, I was living here in Charlotte, NORTH Carolina at the time, which is pretty far inland. Still, the hurricane powered ashore and when it reached Charlotte it was still very close to hurricane strength. I was working that night at a La Quinta Inn. In the lobby we actually had working wooden shutters on the windows, hinged and closed from inside, for God only knows what reason. Presumably part of standard La Quinta architectural practice. Anyway, I shut them.

I had my car parked behind a pylon of the carport, which sheltered it from flying debris. And flying debris there was throughout that night. The storm blew clay tiles off of the roof, to smash into bits in the parking lot; A sign from the convenience store across the street was blown out of its frame and sailed across the road, striking a few cars and coming to rest in our parking lot.

At the height of the storm blue flashes announced power transformers shorting out, and early in the wee hours of the morning the power went out, along with the switchboard for phone calls; cell phones were in their infancy back then, few people had them. I turned on the AM radio that the managers had purchased, using it to keep track of weather reports throughout the night. Guests came down to wait in the lobby with me. No way to make coffee, of course, or provide any breakfast except packaged pastries.

La Quinta had a corporate policy back then (don't know if they still do) of hiring "management couples" to run their hotels. These were husband-and-wife teams who were given, as a perquisite, an "apartment" at the hotel, usually two guest rooms joined together and remodeled with kitchen, etc. So with managers on property I didn't have to worry about being relieved in the morning (I wasn't, either, the managers took the desk when my shift was over and the 1st shift worker failed to appear).

At 7 in the morning I departed for home. Down at the bottom of the first hill raged a river of rainwater, so I had to turn around and take a different road. Trees and power poles were down all over the city; luckily few cars, as everyone had heeded the warnings to stay home. Power was out all over the city. Everyone was fine when I got home. As I recall we got power back at home before the weekend was over, and so did the hotel, late on Sunday. I went in to work early Sunday to get all the paperwork organized and fed into the computer. During the next month the hotel hosted a rowdy crew of opportunist workers who drove around the city with trucks and chainsaws, offering their services at fallen tree removal. They made money hand over fist.

23 years ago. Seems like yesterday.

1 comment:

SENIOR said...

I remember that storm very well, my father lives just south of you in Lancaster and he had no power for 30 plus days. I learned a lot about being self sufficent and getting through emergency situations from what he did. Of course phone lines were down and he had no cell phone.