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Bath tubs full of water, candles burning, and wood crackling in the fireplace. The scene is still vivid in my five-year old mind. The hurricane had hit South Carolina directly, but effect like high winds and rain were prevalent even at our home in Salisbury. Hugo’s side effects were even to the extent of an uprooted tree in our backyard. Wind speeds exceeded 138 mph, huge tidal waves bashed the coast and a 20-foot storm surge ravished the coast of South Carolina, and the hurricane became a living nightmare. It was the first land-falling Category 4 hurricane since Camille (Category 5) in 1969. It resulted in 57 deaths on the mainland, 29 deaths on the United States islands, and billions of dollars of damage. Hugo began as a cluster of innocent thunderclouds off the west coast of Africa. These seemingly harmless storms soon became a tropical depression that grew into a tropical storm, and then a hurricane, drifting west-northwest slowly towards the east coast of the United States. The storm passes over Guadeloupe, St. Croix, and Puerto Rico. As it passes through these island nations, it was classified as a Category 4 hurricane, but for a while over the Atlantic, Hugo was a Category 5. The destruction in the Ca