Hurricane Hugo-20 years ago today

Speaking of, does anybody know what time they air the movie tonight?

Something like "Big Picture - Hurricane Hugo 20 years later"

I saw an ad for it on the Island Channel...just forgot what time

Noah

Ok got the info

It's called Hugo - The Longest Night

According to the youtube trailer it's on Channel 2

9/19 7:00 and 11:00 p.m.
9/20 11:00 a.m.
9/26 7:00 p.m.

How could anybody have captured video footage? Scary

My neighbor told me that when the eye passed over, everyone in the neighborhood thought the storm was over. They were out and about assessing the damage which he said wasn't nearly as bad as he feared. Then then other half of the storm tore this place up.

my dad's video footage is what CNN used for the news in the states. It captured the storm, before and after, and the looting that went along with it. Just the mayhem that everyone went through. We had sent the video up to the states to save for us (all videos get moldy here...we have so many that were ruined) and we're trying to get it back down here and transfer to DVD. I was 5 when Hugo hit but i definitely remember it. The fact that the storm just sat on us, 5mph, made it the longest night. The storm was captured at 287mph before it broke the scale. No one believed that we had actual tornadoes in the storm - it was unheard of...not if you saw the trees after! It was only after Hurricane Andrew that they found that hurricanes could have tornadoes...glad that our roof stayed on and that we were able to stay and continue to live here.

what time and what channel tonight???

and repeated those days and time noah gave????

I was living on the coast of N.C. at the time. we were getting ready for hugo to hit there. Hit Charleston S.C. and Myrtle beach instead.

We still had some damage. I remember watching the news and seeing crazy islanders running around and thinking to myself.....i am so glad i don't live there. and to my shock my husband came home a year to the day later and said,.....how would y ou like to move to st. croix...i was like" ARE YOU CRAZY???? i kept thinking of the destruction ......

NOAH....is channel 2 cbs local???

no, they're not running it tonight...they're waiting until the weekend.

ok thanks forbes. Also someone needs to remind the weather channel. they have ivan and floyd remembered .....said remembering floyd 10 years ago today. Guess Hugo didnt deserve to be remembered by T.W.C.

In October 17 1989 I was living a few miles from the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake in northern California. Before the quake we had finalized our spring 1990 trip plans for our first time to a Caribbean Island named St Croix. I knew nothing about the island but I liked the name. Well we had our earthquake and damaged and destroyed buildings boiling water and flashlights at night, no power or media for days, but we got through it and started to rebuild.

Earlier We read in the paper that our next vacation destination had been "hard hit" by hurricane Hugo exactly one month before our little shaker. Little did we know that hard hit meant almost wiped out. We needed a vacation that spring so did not cancel our vacation plans and flew off to St Croix to begin our adventure. The hotel (Cormorant), restaurants and car rental company (Olympic) were happy to see us. We did not know what St Croix looked like before, but the destruction we saw was mind boggling. Despite the damage we found a place that we absolutely loved. Yes, there were tent cities, and a tent hospital, even a tent high school (st Josephs?) and many businesses were closed. Some forever.I still remember bigger potholes than even now, collapsed water tanks (imploded) and sheared off palm trees.

After our month in St Croix, we had other vacations. We spent time on St John and St Thomas and Tortola and Virgin Gorda and Anguilla and St Martin. But we came back to live on St Croix because it had .. it had..I don't know, it had become a part of us. or maybe we had become a part of it.

Twenty years later we still see some of the reminders of the destruction like the Grapetree Hotel and dozens of concrete slabs. The economy has never really recovered, though I think it tried before the recent world wide melt down.

One thing i forgot to comment on about post Hugo that I didn't say above. Think of all the lush vegetation on the island and then imagine that there was none...it was gone, blown away. I wasn't really aware of this until years later when it had all grown back. Imagine clear views to the sea and few trees or bushes to block it. That's how we thought St Croix looked. I remember some of the low lands on the south shore that block your view of the sea. Imagine that nothing blocked your view, that is how it looked. I just wanted to add that. I hope some who were here then will comment more.

If you remember the news in the states talked about Puerto Rico and of course Florida and So Carolina. Hugo was (probably still is) the most destructive hurricane to hit those parts. Other storms caused more damage, but the windspeeds of Hugo were the highest recorded to that time. So, the news we got was more about Florida and the Carolinas, not some unimportant little island. Unimportant unless it was your house.

I just finished watching "Hugo, the longest night on channel 2, cbs. Incredible. Makes me love St. Croix more than ever. I hope you all get to watch it. It comes on again tonight at 11:00pm and also tomorrow.

We watched it last night and I must say I was dissapointed in the coverage. I felt they should have had more newsreel clips, flim, and before and after still photos.
They had people saying that every leaf and blade of grass was gone, but the footage looked pretty green to me, someone who had never seen the area before.
They also showed shots from St Croix by the Sea hotel that survived Hugo but was taken put in either Marilyn or as I have been told, by the previous owner, a big storm after Marilyn.
Also there should be more than six people that went through Hugo who are still on island.

Please don't take this that I am trying to down play Hugo, I'm not. It just didn't show me just how bad, I know it was and have been told by many the horror stories that Hugo was.

I guess I'm just used to big network productions and works of Ken Burns.

There is some footage on youtube that was taken in PR by some crazy people who went out in that storm. I am sure that they could have found more people to talk about what they went through that night but my experience in talking to anyone that went through that storm is that they don't want to talk about it much. Most of them shudder when I bring it up. I went through Floyd in Virginia and while not anything like Hugo, I felt shell shocked afterwards. The despair of everyone trying to salvage what little was left of their things.

The grass you saw was just patches on low-lying ground. People were talking about the majority of the island being defoliated. HUGE mahogany trees were pulled out of the ground. You don't realize the noise birds make until there aren't any.

I remember when the birds started coming back, it was wonderful.

terry, i agree with you. i thought it was interesting. but i also felt they could have shown more photos of before and after as well as video from news orgs too. i also thought the sound quality was not very good. had to turn the volumn way up and and it still didnt help. my bf also made mention of the fact that there still was alot of greenery. i did enjoy when twila said her store was looted and then they came back to help her out in the store "free of charge" to make up for what they stole. i can almost understand looting food, but other things not so much.

Speedy1,
The loss of greenery and the lack of birds singing was nothing compared to the "complete collapse of law and order".

now that is what i heard too. i couldnt even imagine. my bf was in miami after andrew and they used to ride around with the gun in plain view to detract looters froms bothering them.

It was a pretty disappointing show. We were glad to see the interviews (did anyone else think that some folks have not aged well?) but were very disappointed not to see more footage from the storm and post storm. I wanted to see the former chief of police looting Kmart for TV's again!

Nissman was hilarious about the national guard staying. And why did they show St. C? That was not ruined by Hugo!

What about Bert & Celistino at Caribe Do It---did they show that?

so it sounds like theu missed alot for this 20 yr anniversary

With the devastation and havoc, I would be remiss if I didn't say this. The people that had the least, were the people that shared the most. They may have been poor with financial resources, but were rich in kindness and generosity with what they had. And that's first hand experience talking.

I agree with Lizard about the sharing and kindness that was everywhere after the initial shock of Hugo was realized. The fact that so much caring could come out of the VI people may be the main reason I can still live here - because I know underneath all the other stuff that happens the VI people are really the best.

The lack of video and other footage post storm partly stems from the lack of electricity, the terrible damage that required attention other than recording it and the technology of 1989 in the VI. We all have a roll or 2 of film from the after effects and maybe a small album of photos but even many of those things were lost when Marilyn came through just 6 years later.
I did not get to see the TV program but lived through the times and survived.

what is amazing is that only 2 people lost their lives during the storm, much higher in miami for andrew