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Hurricane Gallery

In the eye
of the hurricane
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

In the eye of the hurricane, Part two

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times, June 11, 1990

John Maybank was a stockbroker, not a meteorologist. But he had spent most of his 44 years in South Carolina and he had noticed one thing about hurricanes. When there was a high pressure ridge over the eastern United States, hurricanes stayed away. When there was a low pressure trough, they came ashore.

This September had been a wet one, due to an area of low pressure that had refused to budge. Now, as Hurricane Hugo moved out of the Caribbean, Maybank had an uneasy thought:

Maybe our time is coming.

Maybank's ancestors had settled on the banks of the Ashley River in 1670. They were one of Charleston's oldest families, and they had been through every conceivable type of calamity that could visit a place -- tornadoes and earthquakes, fires and plagues, invasions and wars. They had been through hurricanes, too, at least 90 of them, including one that killed more than 1,000 people in 1893.

As a boy, John Maybank had been raised on stories of Gracie, the last major storm to strike the South Carolina coast. It had done $7-million damage -- a substantial amount in 1959 -- and devastated much of the timber on the family farm south of Charleston.

So Maybank had a healthy and inbred respect for the forces of nature. On Wednesday, a few hours after Mayor Riley appeared on TV, he left his office and went home to build sawhorses.

John and Kay Maybank lived in a two-story house overlooking the Ashley River, a few blocks from the Battery. His father had built it in 1930, with pilings 60 feet deep and foot-thick walls covered by three layers of brick. The gracious Georgian facade belied a construction as solid as that of a fort.

The plan was to carry the lighter pieces of furniture upstairs and put the heavier stuff on the sawhorses. But Maybank really didn't expect any flooding. The house was 101/2 feet above sea level and there had never been a drop of water in it -- not during Gracie, not even during an unnamed storm in 1940 that had blown away his parents' weekend house on Folly Beach.

All that evening they moved rugs, chairs, tables, anything they could carry. Kay Maybank finally went to bed but she had a fitful sleep. She awoke at 2, got up at 3. Her husband was still sawing and nailing. They turned on the radio.

"Cars are bumper to bumper out of Hilton Head Island," the announcer said. The storm wasn't due for another 18 to 24 hours and already the traffic was terrible.

"I think you'd better leave," Maybank said.

She took a nightgown, toothbrush and one change of clothes for each of them. Daughter Marion, 6, took a couple of stuffed animals. Then they got in the car and left for a friend's home in Moncks Corner, 30 miles inland. It was still dark.

Maybank had more work to do. He spent most of the morning moving files and computer equipment from his office in downtown Charleston. Around 11:30 a.m. he went home and continued readying the house.

At 3 p.m., the weather was good. There was no sign of the gale-force winds forecasters had predicted the night before.

Should he go or stay?

The mandatory evacuation order was for one-story houses. The Maybanks' had two, three including the attic. The thought of spending the next 12 hours stuck in a car in the middle of a hurricane held little appeal. Maybank decided to stay.

He finished his preparations around dusk, then walked to his sister's house. It was raining, but the winds were so light he could carry an umbrella. At dark, he borrowed a bicycle and rode home.

It was around 11 p.m. when he first noticed the sounds.

They were like no sounds he had ever heard, at one moment high-pitched and eerie, like the wail of a banshee: at the next, low and malevolent, like the growl of an enormous beast. It was the wind, wild and unearthly, moaning and shrieking and humming.

The backyard lit up. He ran outside.

"A nightmare about to come"

Nothing ever happened on DuPre Road. And that was the way Thomas Williams liked it.

Now 40, Williams had spent most of his life on this quiet country road in the little fishing village of McClellanville, S.C. He knew everybody who lived on the road -- he was related to many of them -- and it had been a good place to grow up and raise children of his own. He had four still at home, and they seemed to be turning out fine.

Most of the people in McClellanville, 40 miles north of Charleston, made their living from the ocean. Williams earned his from the Francis Marion National Forest. He was a timber foreman, responsible for marking trees to be cut. After two decades with the U.S. Forest Service, he made $21,000 a year.

He'd never be rich, but life was good. His wife, Vangie, had a job in a nursing home, and they'd saved enough to start planning a trip to Hawaii. They were putting aside a few dollars for the kids' education. And last year they'd remodeled their house, a one-story frame place his father had built in the 1920s.

For several days, he'd followed the hurricane's progress. Now, on Thursday morning, he realized he was slow in getting ready.

First he had go to work. They spent several hours moving forest service vehicles to Holly Hill, 70 miles away. They moved the computer equipment, too. No one expected any flooding, but government policy said they had to do it.

At last, a ranger called them together.

"Okay, fellows," he said. "We're going to let y'all go home and batten down your hatches."

Williams went to the hardware store and got batteries, candles and plywood. There were only four sheets of plywood left. He put them on the front windows, figuring the wind would come from that direction.

He went back out and bought canned goods, Band-Aids, rubbing alcohol, Tylenol and cold medication. He filled a 55-gallon drum with water. He put several bags of ice in the freezer.

There was no question the power would go out. It went out whenever they had any kind of storm, and it usually stayed out for days. Repair crews were slow getting to places like this.

At last, Williams felt ready. It was shortly before 6 p.m.

"Let's ride around McClellanville," he said to his wife. "This may be the last time we see it."

He meant it as a joke.

They drove along DuPre Road and into the center of the town, past the moss-draped oaks and the Victorian homes that gave McClellanville its antiquated charm. The wind was brisk, and when they got home, Williams moved his van into a field behind the house. He didn't want any trees falling on it.

Around 8, they heard a piece of tin flapping on the roof. Williams got a 2-by-4 and went up to nail it down. He had a hard time standing in the wind.

When he finished, they gathered in the master bedroom and turned on the TV. The latest satellite photo showed that the hurricane was bigger than the entire state of South Carolina.

"Please, do not take this storm as a joke," weatherman Charlie Hall was saying. "This is a very dangerous storm."

He repeated the warning: Everyone in low-lying areas must evacuate. Williams didn't consider theirs a low-lying area -- it was six feet above sea level and the ocean was five miles away. Besides, they were just 700 yards from Lincoln High School, the evacuation shelter for everyone in McClellanville.

They weren't worried about flooding. If a tree fell on the house or the roof blew off, they could always go to the school.

By 11 p.m. the power was gone. Williams opened the front door and shone his flashlight out. The entire sky seemed to be in motion, rushing past in a swirl of red and orange and black. He'd never seen anything like it.

"Gracious almighty," he told his wife. "It looks like a nightmare about to come."

"How do you get out of here?"

Sometimes, she thought, life seemed to be moving a little too fast.

On Tuesday, she had been in Boston. On Wednesday and Thursday, Florida. On Friday morning, she'd be home in Charlotte. That afternoon, she was leaving for San Antonio.

Karen Geiger, 35, was director of career development for NCNB Corp. In the seven years she'd worked there, NCNB had grown from a bank holding company little known beyond the Carolinas to a regional giant with subsidiaries from Maryland to Florida to Texas. It was considered a tough competitor but a benevolent employer -- among other things, it had won acclaim for innovative programs that let workers spend more time with their families.

The programs fell under Geiger's department, and she traveled often to explain them to people in NCNB's far-flung subsidiaries. It would be nice, she thought, to spend more time with her own two kids.

"This lifestyle is getting out of hand," she'd told her husband, "and I don't know what it's going to take to stop it."

Now she was in Tampa for a conference on work and the family. She didn't like storms and it made her nervous as she read the headlines Thursday, the day she was supposed to leave:

"Hugo hurries toward U.S. -- watch posted from St. Augustine to North Carolina."

Throughout the morning she called Charlotte several times to check on the weather. The airlines already were canceling flights to Charleston, 210 miles away. She considered staying in Tampa and spending the night with a friend.

Finally, she caught a USAir flight that put her into Charlotte early that evening. She stopped at a gas station on her way from the airport. It was humid and windy, and the woman in a car nearby seemed unusually agitated.

"How do you get out of here?" she demanded.

"Why?" Geiger asked.

"Don't you know" -- the woman was almost shouting at her -- "the eye of the hurricane is coming right here!"

Rattled, Geiger went home.

To her husband, Damon Rumsch, hurricanes were exciting. He had grown up in the Virgin Islands, where his family owned two gift stores. As a boy, Rumsch had thought it fun to board up and huddle around the radio, waiting for the hurricanes that often threatened but never struck.

This year had been different. Hugo had ravaged the Virgin Islands, and damaged his grandmother's house. How badly they didn't know -- five days later, communications with the islands were still poor.

Now, as they watched TV, it looked as though Hugo might pass over Charlotte sometime before dawn. But Charlotte was 200 miles from the ocean. How bad could it possibly be?

They certainly weren't worried about the house. It was a sturdy one-story place with an attic. They didn't want any limbs falling on the Jeep and the car, though, so they moved them to the back of the drive, away from the trees.

Around 10, Rumsch, a contractor, left to help cover up a job site. By the time he returned an hour and a half later, the wind had picked up only a bit.

"It won't come here," he told his wife. "Once it hits land, it's not that bad."

They went to bed.

Water was coming through the letter slot

At the first flash of light, John Maybank thought his garage was on fire. Now, he could see it: a tree limb had crashed onto the power lines, and brilliant flashes of electricity arced through the sky. Just then, a door blew open, and rain pelted the sun porch.

He put 10 nails in the door. He got a towel and mopped up. The power had gone off, but the phones were still working. He went upstairs to call his wife. As they talked, he heard another noise.

"I've got to go down and secure that door again," he told her.

It was a different door this time. Maybank stepped onto the sun porch. He was startled to feel water up to his ankles. He tried to shut the door but the force pushing against it was too great.

I'll have to let it go, he thought.

Maybank had felt certain he could keep the house dry. He figured he could keep checking the windows and doors, plugging any leaks that developed. Now he knew that was wishful thinking. There would be damage. The only question was how much.

He got his flashlight and shone it out the front. He could see water rolling over the Battery.

It was a little after midnight. The wind died, and it became very still. The eye of the hurricane was directly over Charleston. Maybank went to the third floor and removed a screen from a dormer window. He shone his flashlight down. Another layer of water was moving steadily over the Battery, at the speed of a fast walk. He watched it roll into the garage and knock out the windows.

The windows were more than four feet high.

Maybank hurried downstairs. They had put the dining table on sawhorses, and he could still see its ornate ball feet. The water in the house couldn't be more than two feet deep. Maybe it wouldn't get any deeper.

The eye passed. The winds were even stronger now and they seemed to have shifted to the southeast, the direction from which the water was coming. He could no longer see outside so he sat on the landing, flashlight in hand, and looked down at the front door.

Water was coming through the letter slot. It was a big, heavy door, two-and-a-half inches thick and eight feet tall, and the slot was halfway up.

A tremendous force blasted the door from its hinges. Waves smashed into the house, pushing the door before them like a battering ram.

It's going to destroy everything, he thought. He ran down and grabbed the knob. Somehow, he managed to drag the door far enough up the stairs to wedge it between the banister and the wall.

How high would the water go? Maybank had no idea. All he knew was that waves were breaking in the hallway of a house that used to be 101/2 feet above sea level. For the better part of an hour, he kept moving. To the third floor, to see if rain was coming in. Downstairs, to see if the ball feet were still visible.

After a couple of trips, he noticed something: The depth of the water had not increased. In fact, the water was beginning to go down. It went down so fast it was dangerous. It would have swept anything, or anyone, out into the river.

The hurricane was moving on.

Maybank realized he was exhausted. He had gotten no sleep Wednesday night, and it was only a few hours until dawn Friday.

He went upstairs and lay down.

Suddenly, the van went under

Thomas Williams stared into the night. The clouds were so low he could see them boiling past. It was frightening to watch.

He shut the door. The TV was off, and they couldn't pick up much on the radio. They all went back to the bedroom.

It was a little after 1 a.m. when they heard Sonny, the Chihuahua, barking in the kitchen. Williams went to check. A piece of tin had come off the roof. It wasn't a big piece so they decided to forget about it.

Williams noticed the carpet was wet. He was mad at himself. The rain wouldn't have come in if he had spent a little extra money and put shingles on that part of the roof.

They decided to move their clothes to the bunkbed in the girls' room. They made one, two, three trips. By now the carpet seemed full of water.

"A pipe must have burst," his wife said.

Williams didn't think so. There was an awful lot of water, and it seemed to be coming up through the carpet, not leaking down.

Then it dawned on him. The house was flooding.

They had to get to the high school. He opened the front door.

Water was coming over the porch. It was at least four feet deep, probably five, and rising. They'd never make it.

Williams went back to the girls' room. He yanked out some ceiling tiles and punched a hole in the sheet rock. Water poured into the house, and churned around his knees. He shoved 6-year-old Matthew onto the rafters. Then he began to worry -- what if Matthew fell off into another room? He'd drown before somebody could reach him. Vangie would have to go next.

Williams pushed his wife through the ceiling. Then he handed up the rest of the kids and the dog.

The water was almost to Williams' neck.

He noticed the radio on the bunkbed, and he tossed that up. The water jug and a box of crackers floated by, so he tossed those up, too.

Now he turned his attention to the mattress. He wanted to get it up there so Vangie and the kids would have something to hold onto. He was the only one who could swim. If the water kept rising, they wouldn't have a chance. But the mattress was big and bulky, and he couldn't get it through the ceiling.

"Leave it alone," his wife shouted.

Williams realized there was nothing more he could do. He hoisted himself through the hole and joined them. The water was so deep it lifted the dresser as though it were a feather.

It was cold in the attic, and loud. They had to scream to hear one another. The wind sucked off part of the kitchen roof, and Williams crawled across the rafters. He shone his flashlight out the hole. The neighbor's van was moving through the water. They must be going to the school.

Suddenly the van went under. He could see nothing but darkness.

Williams felt sick. His kids and wife would drown, too, he was certain of it. In his mind, he could hear it: four children screaming "Daddy" as the water carried them away.

He found some cord he'd stored in the attic. "Y'all come over here," he said. They held hands and prayed. Then he tied the cord around five waists and finally his own.

The water was almost up to the ceiling. They might die, he thought, but at least they wouldn't find the bodies of the Williams' family scattered all over McClellanville.

She couldn't move in any direction

At 3 a.m. Geiger and Rumsch awoke. The wind was so strong they could see branches and shingles blowing down the street. They got the boys out of bed and put them on a mattress in the hall. Michael, 2, wouldn't stay there so they put him back in his crib.

It was just a bad storm, Rumsch figured, and went back to bed. Geiger, though, couldn't sleep. The noises bothered her, loud crackling noises, like a transformer exploding. She got the newspaper and, as she often did, went into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet seat and started to read.

There was a noise so loud it seemed to shake the entire house. Her head jerked up. The ceiling was beginning to crack.

She lunged for the door.

Rumsch heard the noise too. Then he heard a weak voice.

"Help me, Damon."

He found her face down, in a fetal position. Part of a huge tree limb was crushing her back. She was covered with plaster and insulation, and water was pouring into the bathroom, soaking her and everything else.

"I'm okay," she said. "Just get this tree off me."

Rumsch tried to move the limb. It wouldn't budge. He raked through the debris, trying to see exactly where she was pinned. He tried to pick up another part of the tree. Still no luck.

He ran into the living room and dialed 911. There was a tone, but no answer. He tried again. Nothing.

Rumsch remembered the baby. He ran into the room next to the bath, and found Michael crying in his crib. He had to reach through leaves and debris to get him out. Part of the tree had come to rest a foot above the crib.

He put Michael in the hall and, in robe and thongs, went out into the storm to find some help. He ran from house to house, pounding on doors with all his might so he'd be heard above the wind. Several neighbors came back with him. It was no good. The tree was too heavy to lift.

He was glad, now, that he had moved the cars. The tree had fallen on the part of the driveway where they usually parked. He backed the Jeep around it and and drove to the fire station, a few blocks away. He got there just as the crew was returning from a run.

In 29 years with the Charlotte Fire Department, Capt. Chris Christenbury had seen almost every type of emergency. This one remained extremely dangerous.

The oak weighed several tons, and it had come through the attic and the first-floor ceilings, causing enormous structural damage. The limb pinning Geiger seemed to be supporting the rest of the tree, which was swaying in the wind. Would the entire tree fall to the ground, killing her and bringing the house down on Christenbury's men?

They had to stabilize the tree. Part of the crew stayed outside, struggling to inflate air bags so they could prop them under the limbs to keep them from moving. But the wind was tremendous, and the bags bounced around the yard like giant beach balls.

Geiger was conscious, but Christenbury knew her injuries must be severe. The tree covered her foot, leg, buttocks and half of her back. She was pinned against the door jamb, and she couldn't move in any direction.

They would have to cut her out.

They brought in a generator for lighting, and built a shield out of 4-by-4s to keep more debris from dropping on her. Now one of the firefighters took a handsaw and began cutting a piece of wood that appeared to be sticking into her side. It was six inches wide and three inches thick. If they were lucky, they'd be able to lift her out after they got that piece free.

The wood came loose. She remained pinned.

The main part of the limb was at least two feet in diameter. They switched to a chainsaw. But it kept loading up with moisture. Every few minutes, they had to let it dry out and go back to cutting by hand.

Geiger could see nothing but boots moving around in front of her. Every time the tree swayed, the limb on her foot moved, too. The pain was excruciating.

"Does it hurt?" one of the firemen kept asking. He was a friend of Rumsch's and he was assigned to talk to her, to keep her alert. Paramedics, were there, too, checking vital signs and giving oxygen. But the bathroom was so filled with debris only two people could work in it at a time.

Rumsch felt helpless. Cold water was pouring over his wife, and she was turning gray. They had put a backboard between her and the tree, to keep the chainsaw from hitting her if it suddenly bucked. But they didn't want to cover her with a blanket, for fear the chainsaw would snag the material, and her.

It took an hour and a half to cut her free. They were just starting to remove her when they heard a crash outside. Another huge oak had toppled onto one of the fire trucks, crushing it in half.

Had it fallen on the house, it might have killed them all.

The storm was worse. The roads were slick with leaves, and the ambulance kept skidding off the pavement as they tried to find a way not blocked with trees. Geiger no longer seemed to be in pain, and her voice sounded very faint:

"I don't think we're going to make it to the hospital."

Part Three: First they saw the mayor's face. Then they saw her house. There was no point stopping to secure it -- there were no doors left to close.