from John M. Burbage

I was one of two Post-Courier city editors on duty the night Hugo came calling. Steve Mullins, currently managing editor of the Post and Courier, was the other. Our job was to coordinate coverage by a staff of 40 reporters, photographers, and copy editors from the morning and afternoon newspapers.

The Internet did not exist. There were no laptop computers. Nine reporters were issued bulky “bag phones” — those early cells that required batteries the size of shoe boxes. Reporters and photographers submitted stories and photos by whatever means possible. Photographers who managed to get back to the newsroom processed 35 mm black-and-white negatives in the only water available to mix with film chemicals. It was collected in a rain bucket someone wisely placed on the roof.

City water and electricity were out. The building’s diesel-powered generator had never been used. The News and Courier had not missed an edition since it began 187 years before. No one wanted the record to fall. So the presses at 134 Columbus Street were inked, rolled, and ready.

A back-up production staff was on duty 100 miles inland at The State newspaper in Columbia.

Hurricane Hugo: a publication of the Post & Courier 
Evening Post Publishing Company
Edited by John M. Burbage & Jason R. Lesley
Designed by Jason R. Lesley & Gill Guerry
Photography · History · Non-fiction
127 pages · hardcover with jacket
$39.95 · ISBN: 978-0-9825154-0-2


Most people living along coastal South Carolina 20 years ago did not fear hurricanes as they do today. Few had experienced the nameless killer storms of the past. However, those who stayed during Hurricane Hugo vowed never to do so again.

For many of them, Hugo was their finest hour. An important story of death, destruction, determination and survival is told in the pages of this book in words and photos from the Post and Courier newspaper files.

Sept. 21, 1989 marked a beginning and an end. It was a landmark in time, as this book clearly shows. The damage was breathtaking. Houses fell. People were buried alive in debris. At Lincoln High School in McClellanville, hundreds of evacuees were trapped as a 20-foot storm surge filled the rooms. Children were held up through holes in the ceiling to keep them from drowning.

At one Charleston hospital, brave men tied themselves to a fuel pump outside to keep an emergency generator running. The sound of gnarling, gnashing, twisting metal and rending wood echoed through every neighborhood in Hugo's path. Families stood together with shoulders against the doors to keep Hugo out of their living rooms. Others sat frozen with fear while windows burst all around them. Everyone prayed. Twenty-six South Carolinians died.

Hurricane Hugo is history now. The dead were buried, the physical damage was repaired, the trees grew leaves again, lessons were learned and life goes on.

Look Inside