Union Firefighter Remembers Hugo 20 Years Later

By: Christy Henderson | News Channel 7
Published: September 22, 2009

It was so big, it was like unleashing a magnitude of tornadoes all at one time.

Mike Morgan was a captain at the Jonesville Fire Department and coordinator for Union County Emergency Preparedness in 1989 when Hurricane Hugo slammed onshore. Twenty years later, Hugo proved that the upstate, as well as the coast can get hit when a powerful tropical system moves onshore.

"As it got closer we started watching it," said Morgan. "Even more so, getting daily updates from the State EOC (Emergency Operations Center.)"

Morgan says that around 8 am when they received an update from the Emergency Operations Center, they went to a full activation of the EOC in Union County.

"There's not that many large scale events like that where you're going to have people in the EOC all day and all night," he said.

Higo moved across the state at about 25 miles per hour. It covered more ground with power which in turn spread the damage farther inland. However, Union County stayed on the safer, left side of the track, but the area still sustained high winds.

"When it came through, it pegged it out for quite a while," he recalls. "So, we sustained 60 mile per hour winds for some time."

The storm damage could have been worse.

"We had sporadic power outages, trees down across roadways and some light building damage," Morgan said. "The EOC at the time was in the basement of the old Union County jail, and we knew that if we had gotten a lot of rain, that we had the potential for flooding."

The damage was much worse 50 miles to the east of Union County.

'We also sent some crews over into the Chester area to helop with the storm cleanup over there with chainsaws and all all cause the damage was a slot worse over there," he said. "This was way on inland. This was not right on the coast like Charleston and all that. This was more inland and you still had this kind of damage like this."

Morgan and his crew helped recovery efforts from Union and Chester counties all the way to the coast. The pictures he proved to him and others that during hurricane season, everyone needs to be ready for what may or may not come our way.

"You never can be prepared enough," he said. "That's basically it in a nutshell."