Sept. 09--SHELBY -- When Hurricane Hugo hit Cleveland County in the early morning hours of Sept. 22, 1989, Perry Davis responded with the rest of the members of the Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department.
Forecasters had been tracking the storm since Sept. 10, when it appeared southeast of the Cape Verde Islands . But the storm's strength was still a surprise to county officials, then county fire marshal and assistant emergency service director Bo Lovelace told The Star in an article published Sept. 25, 1989.
"We put the fire departments on alert at 6 p.m. Thursday (Sept. 24, 1989)," Lovelace told The Star.
Davis headed out in the storm, but quickly decided the best place to be was at the station.
"I was driving a small S-10 pickup and sitting on the side of a hill about 2-1/2 miles from the station," said Davis, who now serves as County Fire Marshal and Emergency Management Director. "It shook the truck back and forth. It was a devastating storm."
The volunteers waited at the station until the most severe part of the storm passed over. When it was safe, they went out to find power lines and trees down everywhere, Davis said.
"It was widespread throughout the county," he said.
'I slept until the eye hit'
John Tallent, who works part time in the County Fire Marshal and Emergency Management office, worked for Duke Power in 1989. He was in the safety division at the Catawba Nuclear Station.
"I saw damage from Clover, S.C., to Shelby to Charlotte," he said. "The night before Hugo came through I was teaching a class in Gaston County and I sent the firemen home early. They lost a fire truck that night."
He slept through Hugo, because he said whether you work for Duke Power or are a volunteer firefighter, there's nothing you can do until the storm is over.
"I slept until the eye hit," he said. "A tree landed on my house. I went up on the roof and cut the tree down off the roof during the eye."
Then he went to work and worked 16-20 hour days for more than a week.
'It was scary'
While most people rode the storm out at home, Donna and Tommy Vess, and their two daughters, had to venture out because he was scheduled for an endoscopy at Cleveland Regional Medical Center.
"I called the hospital to see if they still wanted us to come and they said they had generators and to come on," Donna Vess said. "We had to leave at 4 a.m. It was raining so hard that he pulled the car around to the back door for us to get in. There were trees down and transformers blowing. It was scary."
When they finally arrived at the hospital, employees told Donna and her daughters to wait in the lobby away from the windows. The girls were 10 and 12 and Donna had brought them a blanket.
"We hadn't heard anything about calling off schools," she said. "I felt like the safest place for them was with me at the hospital."
'Just went through tornado'
Former County Fire Marshal and Emergency Management Director Dewey Cook was also at the hospital when Hugo hit Cleveland County.
"My dad had a medical issue and I was there all night," Cook said. "They had generators and they didn't compromise the patients."
Cook said the emergency responders used lessons learned from the 1989 tornado that struck Belwood in May of that same year.
"We had just went through the tornado in May so we were already in that mode of disaster," he said. "We plugged into what we had already learned from the tornado."
The upper end of the county fared better during Hugo, because the tornado had already taken out the weak trees and weak power poles.
The storm came from east to west, Cook said. So the Kings Mountain area received more damage than other parts of the county.
"The further West it came, the weaker it got," he said.
The Star's Facebook fans were quick to share their memories of Hurricane Hugo. Want to be part of the conversation? Find 'The Shelby Star' on Facebook and click like.
Everyone piled into the bathrooms at Kemet Electronics on third shift. They wouldn't let us leave.
PJ Cook
My niece was born during Hugo. She's known as a Hurricane Hugo baby.
Kesha Justice-Bolin
My husband was working third shift. He called to check on my 2-year-old and I. I told him my mom had come by before work, and she said leaves were blowing across the street. He said, 'Yeah, and now there are limbs attached. Stay home.'
Deborah Mauney
I was in the seventh grade, and we were supposed to go to on a field trip to the Discovery Place that day. However, we stayed in the basement of my neighbor's house and had no power for a week and a half.
Christopher Allan Black
Our trash cans and the bottom part of our storm door were found at the other end of the street. The siding from my grandma's house scratched up her brand new car.
Jenni Hamrick
We had no power for 17 days or running water. We were on a community well so Bethlehem Fire Department brought out a big tank of drinking water. You just had to take your own jug. I was 13 at the time.
Billie Luann Hoyle
I was 7 and I remember living in an apartment complex. A tree was uprooted from the ground and I remember looking outside and I was shocked when I touched the window panel.
Christal Borgo
I remember watching trees being pulled right out of the ground that were over 5 feet wide at the trunk. As a 5 year old that was crazy to me. Gastonia was a ghost town for days afterward.
Keith Laye
I had a 2-year-old and a 16-day-old and I had everything from blankets, diapers and bottles in my basement. I went from window to window to watch and see if I needed to wake them to go downstairs. If anyone has babies that age, you know you don't wake them unless you have to.
Amelia Daves Poston
Tropical storm forming now is similar to Hugo
Accuweather reported Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, that a couple of tropical waves were crossing the Atlantic Basin. The strongest wave moved off the coast of Africa this past weekend and is currently located a few hundred miles south of the Cape Verde Islands (similar to the formation of Hugo, 25 years ago). This wave will track to the west over warm ocean waters and into an area of low wind shear through the coming week. Models are showing this wave having a good chance of organizing and strengthening during the next couple of days. It could become the fifth tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic Basin.
The power of Hugo
Although Hugo made landfall 200 miles away in Charleston, S.C., North Carolina suffered $1.7 billion in damages.
In North Carolina, 700,000 people lost power, some for up to two weeks. Duke Energy Company spent $109 million in those two weeks repairing or replacing 8,800 poles, 6,300 transformers, 1,700 electric meters, and 700 miles of cable and wire.
At the time, Hugo was the most expensive hurricane to ever hit the United States. Although this record was shattered by later storms like Andrew, Fran, Floyd, and Katrina, Hugo is still listed in the top 10 costliest U.S. storms. The National Weather Service (NWS) estimates that if Hugo were to hit today, it would destroy 21,000 homes and cause $8 billion in damages in South Carolina alone.
Hugo 1989 Timeline
Sept. 9 -- Origin of Hugo detected on satellite imagery when a cluster of thunderstorms moved off the coast of Africa.
Sept. 10 -- Developed into a tropical depression to the southeast of the Cape Verde Islands.
Sept. 11 -- Becomes a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean.
Sept. 13 -- Becomes a Category One hurricane.
Sept. 15 -- Becomes a Category Four hurricane. A hurricane hunter aircraft nearly crashes in Hugo's 160 mph winds.
Sept. 17 -- Hits the islands of Guadeloupe and Montserrat; 21 people die.
Sept. 18 -- Hits Puerto Rico as a Category Three hurricane; 9 people die.
Sept. 20 -- Grazes the Bahamas with 100 mph winds. Carolinians begin storm preparations.
Sept. 21-22 -- Hits Charleston, S.C., just after midnight as a Category Four hurricane with 137 mph winds.
Sept. 22 -- Over Charlotte at 7 a.m. as a tropical storm with 60 mph winds.
Sept. 23 -- Over the Ohio Valley.
Sept. 25 -- Dissipates in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Sources: Renaissance Computing Institute at East Carolina University (RENCI at ECU), National Weather Service
From The Star, Sept. 22-25, 1989
Despite winds up to 90 miles per hour, there were no injuries reported in the county.
Officials estimated that Hurricane Hugo rivaled the May 5, 1989 tornadoes in the amount of property damage done.
The eye of the storm passed over Cleveland County around 7:30 a.m. Sept. 22.
Several hundred people used emergency shelters in Kings Mountain and Casar.
Officials estimated damage to be $300,000 scattered through the Kings Mountain-Oak Grove-Bethlehem section.
The damage estimate was expected to be around $1 million when all the figures were totaled.
At the peak of the storm, Sept. 22, about 14,000 customers were powerless and several hundred were still without power on Sept. 25.
Duke Power said 140 extra Duke employees from Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia worked to restore power.
Copyright 2014 - The Star, Shelby, N.C.
