Storm Aftermath

William H. Golod, Ph.D., College of Pharmacy

“So we got up the next day and it was a mess. I mean the mud on the first floor was a good halfway up between my ankle and my knee. It was just like someone had dumped in dirt and threw water on top of it.”

“We started on a telephone campaign to get the word out to all the faculty that were in the Charleston area, that they had to be in the office at eight o'clock on Monday morning with dirty clothes, be prepared to remove carpet because all of our floors were carpeted…Some faculty members came with their children and their wives…and we ripped out every bit of carpet that was on the first floor and threw it into the backyard behind the building. It was just saturated with water and heavy as hell.

“…everyone came back for three solid days. We pulled every bit of carpet out, we hosed down all the floors, we hosed down the furnishings thinking we could save them. And we hosed down and wiped down all the cabinetry. And by the end of the week we were ready to go back into class.”

“We lost equipment and some froze up to the point where it was almost too costly to strip it down to the smallest parts.”

“…we had a lot of equipment that was up [off the floor] and that could very easily be cleaned up and put back into shape. So I would say probably, one third we had to replace, and two thirds was able to be fixed up and then reused.”

Sherry Gillespie Miller, R.N., Children’s Hospital

“…services came back as quickly as they could…The building engineer crew were fantastic. I mean they were running to take care of this or take care of that.”

M. David McDaniel, Children’s Hospital Pharmacy

“We did not lose a single patient during the course of the storm which was, in my mind, a huge accomplishment.”

“On the roof of the Clinical Science Building, we had tar paper and then you had rocks that you put down on top of them, well actually tar and then pebbles, big river rocks. Well, the storm had blown all those rocks off into the garage and shattered most of the windows of most of the cars on the streets and in the garage.”

“We were back and running…I would say within five days, we were back to normal. The patients started coming back on Sunday or Monday and because of the lack of major damage, we were able to get right back into it pretty quickly.”

“I thought the university responded appropriately and they took care of us as best they could; they made allowances for those of us that needed to take care of the damaged homes. You know, I thought they did a good job and I don’t know that they made any major changes because I don’t know that you could make really major changes in it.”

“I’ve never worked so hard, or eaten as much, or felt as good as I did physically for the time after Hugo because it was all work.”

Victor E. Del Bene, M.D., Medical Center

“Then, it turned out that we thought that, in a short period of time, we could replace the two shifts of people we had with another two shifts of people. Well, there was nobody here because people couldn't get back. They had left and they couldn't get back. So, it looked like these folks were going to be on (duty) a long time. We were running out of -- because we had so many people -- we were running out of sheets, and pillow cases, and all those things …And, the toilets were all stuffed up. And, so, it wasn't very nice. It was not really nice.”

Gail Stuart, Ph.D., R.N., Institute of Psychiatry

“When the morning came, of course, that’s when everyone realized the damage that had been done, because when it was covered with water, you really couldn't see it. We were fortunate that the building was intact; there were no broken windows, none of the windows even shattered. We didn't have any water inside the building, so all of that were the good things. Of course, we did all have all of the resultant problems, such as, we lost power, and the Institute had a back-up generator. That also went down. So we were totally without electricity. We were without water. We were without phone service. So think of all of your systems going down.

As I recall too, it was kind of a warm September, and, since it was the Psychiatric Hospital, the windows don't open, and so, we were really containing a lot of heat. Normally, if you lost your air conditioning, you'd move in some fans, right, to clear the air a little bit, but when your electricity isn't working, there’s no fans that you can put out there. So, everyone’s focus became very much immediately concentrated on gosh, kind of the survival mode, where, for example, even getting water was challenging. We had the National Guard come by, and I'll always remember, they pulled up right in front of the Institute probably three times a day, and all of the staff would go in and bring gallons of water, because we had no other way to hydrate people in those conditions. Obviously, our refrigeration system was down, so what milk we had, we reserved for the children, and we had a lot of sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, anything that didn't require refrigeration. Got a little tired of peanut butter and jelly after a while. On the other hand, the sense was everybody was really pitching in. There was a real camaraderie that I think was established just by how we had prepared for it. And then, the fact that you all came through it, and everyone seemed fine, was also very helpful.”

“…everyone did everything. For example, here’s a crisis, the toilets don't work when you lose water. Not good. So we had a ‘Toilet Patrol,’ where we would go around with a plunger and a bucket of water, which was very, you know, precious, and flush them through. And, we had regular, hourly Toilet Patrols.”

“It was about two weeks that we were without the water and all the rest. So, it was a period of time. Towards the end of the first week, or maybe ten days, we did have a couple of folks who could walk to their homes. And so, I think, Hal Currey, George Arana and I decided that all the food that was in the refrigerator and the freezers was going bad. And so we asked everyone to bring in anything that they had in the freezer and we set up some barbecue, charcoal barbecue grills, in the psychiatry courtyard, so it was contained. And we had the world’s biggest, most different smorgasbord of barbecued anything!”

“Because we had taken the computers and put them in the middle space and covered them up, the office damage was minimal. Actually, quite honestly, the entire damage to the hospital was minimal, because of all the building codes and regulations.”

“…it just looked almost like a bomb had hit. I mean, it was just devastation, it was just trees and wires, and just stuff, stuff that had come in from the coastline from everywhere…”

H. Biemann Othersen, Jr., M.D., Children’s Hospital

“I know our offices were pretty well devastated by the leaks. We had moved computers and we'd covered them up with plastic bags so our computers were not damaged but books in bookcases were saturated and we lost a number of books.”

“ Our offices were in shambles from all the water that had been all blown in and leaked in and we'd spent weeks cleaning that up.”

“But I think all in all, when I look back on it, I think the university hospital was well prepared, the response to the hurricane was well thought out and well executed. I think the nurses and the maintenance crew did an excellent job as did the physicians- there were a number of physicians who stayed as part of the essential team. And as I said, none of our patients died or were harmed as a result of the storm.”

Peter B. Rock, Carpentry / Maintenance

“…I was with a crew going out to board up windows on the campus and we were over at the Riverside Building, the Family Medicine on Calhoun Street, and of course, it was hit pretty hard. It didn’t have great windows so we were pretty much boarding up the entire building up for security and weather, you know both. And it really hit me when we’re sitting there working, with the National Guardsmen and the M16 walking around the building with us. And I thought, “Oh my God, this is serious isn’t it?”

Hal S. Currey, Institute of Psychiatry

“At Psych not having any water is a real problem because toilets don't work and people do function, hurricane or no. And so, at that point in time, the nursing staff and attending physicians began quickly to think we have got to move these patients elsewhere and so, they did.”

So, now that was a miserable time after Hugo. It was hot as hell and then, it started raining and the roof leaked like a sieve. I mean that roof where that ballast blew off. With no rocks on it, it broke all over the place so water was pouring in the building. It was not pleasant, hot and it was not a happy group of people.

“It looked, like it was a disaster area. I mean it looked like nothing you've ever seen before.”

“I would say that people worked unbelievably well, under very difficult circumstances. I'm talking staff, physicians, every kind of staff, housekeeping staff, physical plant staff. I mean everybody. I mean everybody did what they had to do. I didn't see anybody say, "Oh my god, I can't cope with this."

Fred A. Crawford, MD, Department of Surgery

“And then the sun came up. The first thing I did was get up and run around all my units to make sure things were still functioning, and everybody was still alive. The next thing I did was to go up on top of the hospital…and stand on the roof, and look back toward Lockwood Drive and all the boats in the city marina were on top of Lockwood Drive. They’d all been washed ashore. You could look around, you could see trees down everywhere. There was no noise because there were no cars moving. And no power.”

“We had a fair amount of water damage from water blowing in around the windows. Some soaked carpet that had to be pulled out. Some sheet rock kind of melted, you know, from water and made puddles of sheet rock on the floor. And we lost some records both from water and from wind because of windows being blown open.”

“A few days later, a day or two later, the second shift came in and took over. But of course they had the same problem because even though they’d been out of town, and they’d had nice showers and everything for a few days, when they came back, they had the same problem the rest of us had, as far as taking care of the houses and rebuilding, and all that sort of stuff.”

“[There was] mold all over the hospital. And we had mold in the operating room as I recall. I don’t know what we did specifically about that but yeah, there was mold and the whole hospital had that sort of rank, wet, humid feel to it you know, for a couple of weeks. You really couldn’t do anything till you got air conditioning back on. I mean, to a sort of a functional basis.”

Tony von Kolnitz, Engineering and Facilities

“After the storm...We had gotten water back in the hospital. People weren’t supposed to drink it… It was running the generators. But when the relief valve blew off on the 11th floor, water started coming down to the 10th floor to the 9th floor, and there beyond. So, we had to get that stopped.”