Lunatic Wind: Surviving the Storm of the Century

by William Price Fox

In late September of 1989, South Carolina was a sleepy southern state drowsing complacently in the late summer heat. No one was ready for what would happen the night of September 21, when the most destructive hurricane of the twentieth century slammed ashore, packing winds of over 135 mph, pushing a 20-foot tidal surge, and leaving behind it a trail of death and devastation hundreds of miles wide.
In Lunatic Wind, author William Price Fox brings to vivid life the terrifying night of Hurricane Hugo. Mixing factual reporting with the expert storytelling of a novelist, Fox's unique docudrama recreates what it was like for the people caught in the "Storm of the Century" - two teenage surfers who must swim for their lives as a beach cottage disintegrates around them, a father searching for his sons, a shrimp-boat captain who decides to ride out the storm in tiny McClellanville Harbor and becomes the only eyewitness to a town's destruction, and over 1,000 men, women, and children trapped in a high school gym, desperately trying to keep their heads above the rising flood.
Intercut with gripping action and survival stories are excursions into the factual record of Hurricane Hugo, the history and lore of hurricanes, plus an insider's look at the local color of the state, the "Low Country," and at the remarkable, often eccentric people who inhabit it.
William Price Fox's Lunatic Wind tells the story of a disaster - of an elemental, unforgiving force of nature that showed just how tenuous are the threads that hold together the fabric of everyday life. With no electricity, no television or radio, no phones, roads and bridges cut off, homes wrecked, and floodwaters rising, it is the story of people who must rely on their wits, their luck, and their friends to survive.

Genres: Nonfiction

197 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having moved up to Columbia from Florida in August of 1989, I was ironically faced with one of the most-severe hurricanes I had ever been through, and I had experienced many. Luckily it skirted our area for the most part, but the coast of South Carolina and a swath through Florence up into Charlotte was devastated. Without burying the read in too much detritus, Fox ably recounts the might storm and the impact it had on the state and some selected individuals, including the harrowing account of a thousand people trapped in a flooded school and facing drowning, and two Columbia surfers caught in the storm surge on Sullivan's Island and their incredible experience. Plus there is plenty of commentary, much of it humorous, on local life and his own experiences. I was wavering on giving it 4 stars. His focus on the golf course was not unexpected, but did show his bias on his favorite sport.