Blasts from the past--news, notes and commentary culled from the back pages of Wood & Wood Products and its ancestral publications.

Editor's Note: The recent grand slam of hurricanes--Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne--wreaked nearly $25 billion in damages in Florida alone; killed more than 3, 000 people, most of them in Haiti by Jeanne; and left thousands homeless. This month, we look back at the havoc created by two previous hurricanes reported in Wood & Wood Products.

1989 Wood & Wood Products

South Carolina Will Rise Again

At least 28 people were killed on the mainland alone and thousands more left homeless after Hurricane Hugo roared across the central eastern coast, flattering anything that dared stand in his way. South Carolina's Charleston County was unfortunate to lie directly in the path of the storm's eye and, as a result, sustained more than $2.5 billion in property damage, not including damage to autos or water damage. According to published reports, 50 percent of the 7,000 homes on the Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island were destroyed; the remaining homes were damaged.

Winds gusting more than 130 miles per hour knocked over the smokestacks and ripped off a portion of a warehouse roof at Sumter Furniture, according to a Wells Fargo employee who answered the telephone at the beleagured plant. Some 650 employees were temporarily, out of work until electrical power could be restored. "I'm 70 years old and I don't remember anything like this. It scattered lumber like toothpicks," he said.

"It sounded like a fleet of freight trams was roaring by my house for four hours, nonstop," said William Hunt, a North Charleston cabinetmaker. Hunt, who huddled with his wife and two children in the family's newly built home, said, "No place and no one was untouched."

Hurricane Hugo stands as a testament to man's fragility and to his resiliency. While the immediate needs of those caught up in this tragic drama are the basics of survival--food, clothing, shelter--their long-term needs will include new homes and, with them, furniture and cabinets.

1969 Wood & Wood Products

Industry Reacts Quickly to Camille Damage

"The worst natural disaster to strike the U.S. mainland in history," said President Nixon about Hurricane Camille. Surveys by industry, federal and state officials in the aftermath of the storm that roared in on the Gulf Coast with 200-mph winds and massive tidal waves in mid-August confirmed the president's statement.

The wood products industry moved quickly in the wake of Camille's devastation. Teams of engineers and technicians were mobilized and dispatched to the disaster areas by the Southern Pine, National Forest Products and American Plywood associations to determine the extent of damage to building structures and timber resources. Mississippi Gov. John Bell Williams appointed a Hurricane Disaster Timber Salvage Council (HDTSC) to organize and coordinate salvage operations and rehabilitation of stricken timber areas.

Preliminary surveys indicate that the storm felled timber on nearly 2 million acres of commercial forestland in 14 southern Mississippi counties. An aerial survey by the U.S. Forest Service revealed that 1,840,468 acres were affected with damages to saw timber estimated at 1.8 billion board feet or more than half again the volume harvested in the entire state last year.

Many saw timber trees are so badly twisted and broken that they can only be salvaged for pulpwood, according to Warren Hood of Jackson Mississippi Ind. Inc., chairman of the HDTSC. He stressed that forest industries have pledged their full cooperation in salvaging as much timber as possible from lands of private owners, even though they have large volumes down on their own lands.

Recommendations on methods for improving safety in both existing and new buildings are expected to emerge from the associations' studies. According to preliminary observations released by the Southern Pine Assn., "While the pattern of devastation was erratic, depending to a large extent on whether homes were on high or low ground and subsequent degree of exposure to tidal waves, some threads ran constant throughout. In cases where foundation, floor structure, walls and roof were all secured to each other, a low incidence of damage and dislocation was found."