On this date in 1989, an unwelcome visitor named Hugo made its mark in Charleston as a Category 4 hurricane.  It had been a Category 5 before weakening slightly just before landfall.  It caused $7 billion in damage in the mainland United States, making it the costliest storm up to that point.  (It is now the sixth-costliest.)

I was living in Columbia at the time, and Hugo was so powerful when it got 100 miles inland and reached Columbia that it knocked our power out for a week!

Charleston has been lucky over the last 19 years.  (Excuse me while I knock on something made of wood for a moment.)

I don’t like hurricanes.  Why am I living on the coast?

I’m just hoping that luck doesn’t run out any time soon.

The gas station I normally buy from adjusted its price per gallon by about twenty cents amid the sudden panic that there would be no more gas because of Ike.  But several gas stations around South Carolina decided to take advantage of the opporunity and reportedly raise their prices above the $5.00 mark.

But now South Carolina’s attorney general is on the case.  A little-known law in South Carolina allows the attorney general to prosecute businesses for price gouging any time an emergency is declared (even in another state) by the president.  Bush declared emergencies in Texas and Louisiana last night.

This law comes into play if a commodity’s price might be affected by some sort of emergency situation, and targets businesses who raise prices too high.  There was no concrete definition provided for what makes a price high enough for prosecution, but if I owned a gas station and I raised the price per gallon by a buck or more in a single day, yeah, I’d be worried.

Well, September 11, 2008 turned out to be a day of terror after all.

Not over some terrorist activity, but over a naturally-occurring gift from Mother Nature:  Hurricane Ike, which is currently poised to hit Texas.  Refineries have been shut down as the storm approaches, and gas prices along the gulf coast have risen sharply in reaction.  Rumors have been running rampant that gas is approaching the $5.00 mark, or at least will approach that price, if the hurricane does enough damage that refineries are delayed in reopening and the supply of gas dwindles.

I don’t know whether what happened next happened across the country or only here in the Lowcountry, but people heard reports on the radio of gas along the coast — the gulf coast — potentially reaching the $5.00 mark.  Then, like that little game we all played in grade school where you form a line and the first person whispers something to the second, and it continues down the line until the last person ends up with a completely different message, the “official” story became that gas prices here in Charleston were not only possibly headed towards the $5.00 mark, but that, inexplicably, they would magically jump up to five bucks a gallon today at 5:00pm.

Five at five?  Sounds like a great marketing ploy if whatever you sell is normally more than five bucks.  But it’s not the kind of thing you’d do to advertise a price hike.  And why 5:00pm?  Why not 4:00pm?  That way, they’d be sure to get even the rush hour traffic composed of people who sneak out of the office a bit early when the boss isn’t looking.

Gas stations all around Charleston were suddenly dealing with long lines of angry customers.  Some were suggesting — suggesting, mind you — that people limit their gas purchase to ten gallons…just in case.  Naturally, that fueled speculation of a potential gas shortage.

Suddenly, it was 1979 or so.

All afternoon, our newsroom was getting emails and telephone calls from people who had heard from a friend or a friend of a friend that gas prices were already up around $4.50.  We were hearing that people were getting nasty in line.  (As if a price of $4.50 wouldn’t come close to giving people a reason to be nasty!)  Some people had been informed that by Saturday, there would be no gas left.  Ever?  Seriously?

I had to get a few gallons’ worth of gas this evening, and I paid $3.65 a gallon.  Just last week, I paid about $3.45.  A nice two-dime increase in a single day.

And have I mentioned that this hurricane hasn’t made landfall, yet?  Of course, when has that ever stopped an oil company from sneaking the prices up?

I’m all for getting more hybrids on the road and reducing our dependence on oil as soon as possible.  But in the meantime, until hybrids are affordable for everyone, we need one more new law where gasoline is concerned:  under no circumstances can a gas station raise the price of gas they’ve already paid for and that is sitting in their tanks waiting to be pumped out, just because gas they buy some other time might be higher.

Can I get an amen?

Of course on a day like this, when everyone’s scrambling to get their gas before the pumps “go dry,” the normal rules of supply and demand would still trump the law:  with demand that high, there’s no way the price wasn’t going up.

Bin Laden’s probably laughing at all of this new terror.  I doubt if he could have done better himself.

Well, for those of you who were wondering, we survived Tropical Storm Hanna. It never even became a hurricane, but it got just about as close to a Category One status as a storm can get without actually crossing the line.

The forecast track had the weather guys guessing all the way to the end. It kept wanting to edge its way west, which kept putting it closer to Charleston, then kept moving more north, meaning it was going to miss us, after all. And in the end, it spared South Carolina any major damage at all, according to official reports.

According to official reports:

• Hanna made landfall near the border of North and South Carolina at 3:20am.
• Despite reports of isolated flooding and power outages closer to the landfall area, there are no reports of any significant damage in South Carolina.
• Only about 650 people made their way to shelters during the storm, and the shelters have already closed.

The last one in particular is a good thing, because it indicates that while Hanna was never going to be a major storm even if it had been a direct hit, there were at least some people willing to take even a tropical storm seriously.

I hope this is the last threat to the Charleston area this season.  I’ve realized that I’m not a fan of this hurricane business.

Forgive a telephone-related pun, but it does double duty in this case.

Just when I couldn’t stall around any longer about heading to our newsroom to answer calls from angry viewers who wanted to watch their shows instead of severe weather coverage, I was told that news had it covered!  Sweet.

I had already had enough attitude just reading a few incoming emails.  I never cease to be amazed — although after 17+ years in television, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore — by the level of rudeness people display when they have something to say.

They’re quick to tell us what we do wrong, and even quicker to tell us what “idiots” we are.  (And that’s the kind of term the more polite ones say.)  And of course, they can’t seem to resist adding that they’re “never watching our station again.”

I’m not unsympathetic at all.  I appreciate the fact that they like something we have to offer enough that they’d get passionate about it.

But I also suspect that they wouldn’t stand still for someone talking to them that way for one second, and that if there was severe weather threatening their specific street and we weren’t on the air alerting them about it, they’d be raising hell about why we were “asleep at the switch.”  (Believe me, I’ve worked at other stations where we missed something and received exactly that kind of response.)

So I wonder what gives them the audacity to take that kind of attitude with someone else.  There is a right way and a wrong way to complain.  Some know how to do it effectively.  Most, unfortunately, don’t seem to get it.

Have I mentioned recently that I am not a fan of hurricanes?  Thought so.

So Hanna, which is still not a hurricane at the moment, and is still heading towards North Carolina.  We’ll get something from it here in Charleston, but because it is a tropical storm, the impact still shouldn’t be so bad.  They’ve already been seeing higher surfs in Florida as Hanna gets closer to the eastern seaboard.  They’re calling for heavy rains from Jacksonville north. They’re calling for wind gusts here potentially up to 70 miles-per-hour, so that could be cause for some concern, but compared to what could have been, I think we’ll have it easy.

Ike, which was a Category Four storm last night, has weakened slightly to a Category Three.  The latest forecast track I saw has it headed toward Miami.  That makes me feel much better, except for the fact that my friends Chip & Lynne and the kids are in Tampa, so if this storm hits Florida, they’re going to get it.

The only good news about Ike at the moment is that it’s hitting the same shear forces that ripped up Fay a couple of weeks ago.  It could potentially weaken to a Category Two before reaching Florida.  I’m all for that.

Josephine is still way out, and is still a very weak tropical storm.  Josephine is my kind of gal.

Meanwhile, if things get dicey here, I’ll try to do some further updates as I can; it’s going to be a crazy day at work, but at the absolute worst, if the power goes, I can now update the blog with my phone.  The wonders of technology, right?

So my first day back to the office after a holiday that I actually got to take off was spent dealing with what could be some messy weather coming by the end of the week.  At the moment, various forecast tracks have Tropical Storm Hanna becoming a hurricane and heading towards the Georgia coast.  That wouldn’t be the greatest news for Charleston, since we’d then be on the northeast side of the storm, where the most damaging winds generally occur.

Last year was my first hurricane season spent here in the Lowcountry.  Charleston hasn’t had a major “direct hit” in years.  The last major hit, as far as I recall — someone local correct me if I’m wrong — was Hugo in late September, 1989.  Some might therefore suggest that Charleston is due.

I don’t like that kind of reasoning.  Any more, I would guess, than the people of New Orleans appreciated being told that they were somehow “due” for Katrina.

I suppose that I should be grateful because there’s so much extra prep work in terms of making sure we have all our bases covered for hurricane conditions that it’s helping keep my mind busy so I’m not focused on another thing that happened today: my friends leaving Charleston bound for California.  I’d like to say that I was so incredibly busy that I didn’t think about them once, and that I didn’t tear up a single time at the thought of them moving.

I’d be lying.  Big time.

In any event, if a hurricane makes landfall in the Charleston area, it will be my first experience in a “ground zero” coastal weather situation.  This is just a guess, mind you, but I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.

The deputy director of FEMA says that Hurricane Gustav will be a “catastrophe” when all is said and done.

I guess we should all be relieved that unlike Hurricane Katrina, FEMA seems aware that a hurricane is even there!

It’s a little intimidating when you suddenly realize that it’s 12:33am and you don’t have a post ready for 1:00am, yet.  But let’s talk about hurricanes and tropical weather.

I work in television and I live in Charleston, South Carolina.  So we’re right on the coast.  When a hurricane (or tropical storm, tropical depression, subtropical system, or whatever else) is headed our way, it’s a big deal.  People are threatened.  Homes and property are damaged.  It impacts people in a big way.  And there’s nothing like the threat of severe weather to drive up a television station’s ratings leading up to the weather event itself.

Within the wonderful world of television, I am a promotion producer, which is a fancy way of saying I’m responsible for the commercials (we call them promos) that encourage you to watch.  And so obviously, I want everyone to watch my station whenever possible.  When there’s the chance of a hurricane, I’m supposed to get excited, because I know people will tune in to see when and where the cataclysm will occur.

There’s just one problem:  I hate severe weather.  I don’t get happy when I know a bad storm is coming.  Because I worry about my stuff outside of work.  I worry about the dogs.  I worry about my home.

On Friday morning, early projections — early projections — had the system likely to become Hurricane Fay heading towards a landfall just south of Charleston…as a Category 4 hurricane.  That would literally be a worst-case scenario for the Holy City.

After talking to the morning meteorologist, I was ready to get back on my anxiety medication.  Of course by the late afternoon, revised projections had the storm headed towards Florida instead of South Carolina.

Thank goodness for updated information.  And for the reminder that while we think we’re in charge of everything, there are some things we can do absolutely nothing about.

We need that kind of humbling experience every now and then, I think.

This morning, Tropical Storm Bertha became a hurricane, and the first hurricane of the 2008 season.

At the moment, it’s out in the Atlantic and is expected to take some kind of curve and spin itself back away from land and into nothingness.  But as local weather enthusiast Jared points out, out of several different forecast predictions, there’s one track that has it moving toward a “direct hit.”  There’s one in every crowd, you know.

Jared also brings up an interesting point:  the last Hurricane Bertha also formed on 7/7.  That was back in 1996.  That storm began south of Cape Verde and made landfall near Wilmington as a Category 2.

I hate hurricane season.

A monster storm known as Hugo made landfall along the South Carolina coast. I’m sure that bloggers in the Charleston area who were living here on the coast will have far better stories about the Category 5 hurricane than I do, because I was living about 100 miles inland, in Columbia.

But despite the distance from the coast, Hugo made its presence known quite effectively well into the Midlands, and all the way into Charlotte after the storm changed directions.

I remember the storm hitting and us being without power for days. Estimates put the number of tornadoes into the thousands, and downtown Columbia looked like a war zone for a while.

The storm was so powerful that by the time it reached Charlotte, it was still at Category 1 strength.

There’s the widespread assumption that those of us in the media live for big storms like this because we love the crisis.  I don’t.  If there was a way to guarantee there would never be another hurricane, I’d be all for it.

I certainly never want to go through anything like that on the “front lines.”  I hope I never have to.

Why, amidst all the human suffering that is happening because of a major hurricane and the failure of levees, would anyone care about animals?

Some people wonder.

For me, I have always been an animal lover. I think the way people treat animals can be a good indication of how those same people treat each other. Animal rights activists have pointed for years to research that many violent offenders in our prisons began their criminal career by abusing animals, not people.

There is story after story coming from the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast about animals now facing starvation after being abandoned by their owners. In many cases, those who did evacuate on buses were not allowed to take their animals with them. But like the rest of the country, these people, forced to make a life or death decision for themselves and, likely, their pets, are now shown not to have had a plan on dealing with disaster in their households.

Would I leave my pets behind? No. Hurricanes scare the hell out of me. I don’t understand why anyone wants to live on the coast; I have enough anxiety in my life as it is, thank you. Every hurricane season, I’d be a nervous wreck…at least more so than I am the rest of the time! When a category five storm was headed my way, you can bet I’d get the hell out of dodge…in my car…with my dogs.

What about the people who didn’t have cars…those people too poor to afford basic transportation? Here’s a question no one is asking so I’ll toss it out there: the average cost of owning a pet, assuming you do feed it and get it at least occasional veterinary care (including those mandatory vaccines) can run into the hundreds of dollars a year. So how are these poor people able to feed pets when they apparently barely have enough to pay for their own food?

When there isn’t a major disaster, any judge worth his robes will lock you up for letting an animal go without food, water, or clean conditions for an extended period of time. It’s called animal cruelty and it’s against the law.

Yet when a disaster strikes, we’re supposed to pretend that there’s no such thing? And even worse, those who are ordering people to evacuate are requiring evacuees to commit what would otherwise be a crime??

Many have complained that the handling of this crisis shows that there is a class system at play in this country. Of course we have a class system: that’s how phrases “middle class” came to be! Some are trying to force the issue of race into this, ignoring the fact that there are poor white, asian and hispanics who are trapped together in the area.

Should the notion that some people seem to be less of a “priority” than others surprise anyone? It doesn’t surprise animal lovers like me: once we start presuming to make value judgments about who should have a chance to live based solely on species, just as the authorities who refused to let victims who’d lost everything else evacuate with their pets had done, the next obvious step is to then start deciding who is and isn’t worth it within the “right” species: humans.

“The elderly probably don’t have much time, anyway…the sick might infect the healthy…the poor aren’t productive enough and will bring down the rest…”

It sounds like an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” that portrayed a futuristic world in which those who didn’t measure up were liquidated in the spirit of keeping “the state” thriving. The program was called “The Obsolete Man.”

None of the victims in this tragedy should have been considered obsolete…and that goes for people and their pets.

I’m not saying that this is really what’s happening there; I don’t believe that the government is saying that the people who stayed behind aren’t worth rescuing. I believe that there are epic failures on display here, but I think the main reason behind them is a lot of bureaucratic red tape and nonsense rather than any targeted prioritizing.

On the other hand, when I see all of the heartbreaking photos of dogs and cats desperate for food and few people doing anything to help them, I wonder what gives anyone the right to say that one living thing is meaningless, and another should get all of our attention right this minute.

You’d think we own the universe.

(Noah’s Wish is currently in the area trying to rescue pets and reunite them with their owners. For more information on this group, visit their website, here.)