After Hugo:

We remained inside the dining room, while water gushed down our central staircase, until around 6 am, when the sky cleared and the rain stopped. In the early morning, we opened the doors, and opened the shutters we could reach, and stepped outside. The street was dry in front of our home. Our garden was wet but not destroyed. On the corner of the street stood a telephone booth at that time. The phone worked. We called our son at college.

On the corner of Meeting Street and Broad Street, known as the Four Corners of Law, stood St. Michael’s Church, the oldest Episcopal church in Charleston, and long a symbol of the City. On the morning after the hurricane, St. Michael’s became a symbol of Charleston’s survival from the storm, when its steeple was bent to a 50 degree angle, and subsequently repaired.

In our yard we found large pieces of the iron fence surrounding the courthouse. Those found a home on our fireplace mantle that day.

We looked for our elderly neighbors. They had lived in their home all their lives and had assured us that we would be safe staying home through the storm. “Why your house has been through an earthquake (we had bolts to prove it) and so many hurricanes, you will be fine,” our neighbor had said. But when we looked for them, their house was empty. Several days later, we saw them and asked if they were ok. “Of course, we ‘re ok, we left town.”

That morning, we walked the streets to our office. King Street was dry. We opened the doors and found that the first floor was also dry, but the second floor, where we had moved all the clothing from the store, was soaked through because the roof had torn apart.

Within a few hours the National Guard had arrived to patrol the street, and we could only enter our offices by showing identification and passing through controls.