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When Ivan came through in 2004, we stood at the back door watching our roofing shingles sail into the air like frisbees when the strong wind and rain blew came through. We had a "blue roof" for 4 months while we waited for the roofing to arrive and then waited for someone to install the roofing.
Until we had weather channels on TV, we didn't hear much about hurricanes or tornadoes. When I was growing up on the farm, I remember that every September we would have "gale winds" and lots of rain. Sometimes it would ruin the cotton crop or rain so much the farmers would lose their peanut crops. When I was a sophomore at Troy University, I remember one September week-end on campus when I thought we would be blown away by the strong wind. We had no warnings that the bad weather was coming. We just stayed inside on Sat. and Sun. and I remember that we walked to classes on Monday in the heavy rain. Classes were not canceled in those days.
There were tornadoes when we lived in Manhattan, Kansas and in other states, but the one I really remember is Hurricane Hugo, in Florence, SC, on Sept 21, 1989. I was teaching school that year and we were told to put things away in our classroom, move the desks against the wall, and prepare the room to be used for shelter from the hurricane. We were at least 70 miles from the ocean and didn't figure we'd have any damage from Hugo, just take care of those who had to leave the beach and come inland and stay a couple of days. The sun was shining that Friday afternoon and not a cloud in the sky when school let out early and we all went home to wait for the storm. It was like sitting around waiting for someone to die!
We went to bed on Sat. night after the storm struck Charleston, SC, thinking we wouldn't have any bad weather. The storm blew inland and high winds traveled all the way to Charlotte, NC doing a lot of damage. It arrived in Florence, SC around 2 a.m. We brought mattresses downstairs to the hallway in the middle of the house to sleep that night. Jim and James went to bed and were sleeping when the howling winds were blowing through the big trees all around us. Some people didn't anchor their chairs, trash cans, and other outdoor things and they went sailing through the air. I kept looking out the window and was so scared. It didn't last too long but did a lot of damage. We were without electricity and water for several days. I learned why they told us to fill the bathtubs with water. We ate cold canned veggies and drank evaporated milk. Ice was scarce and everything in our freezer had to be thrown away. There were so many trees and electric lines down that we couldn't get out of our driveway to get to a store.
We had to have some roofing shingles replaced and the house pressure cleaned. Leaves were plastered to our two-story yellow house and it looked like it had been camoflauged. We were lucky as many of our neighbors had trees fall on their homes.
When school started back a couple of weeks later, we had to have counselors for the children who lost everything and homes were flooded. I really sympathized with people from Miss. and LA when Katrina destroyed their homes.
When we go back to Florence to visit, you can't see any remnants of Hugo. People came from everywhere to help restore the city and remove the tree limbs, restore electricity, etc.
There was great rejoicing after the storm when people gathered at churches to thank God for sparing their lives. You can always rebuild homes, schools and businesses, but you can't replace lives lost during storms.
