Nine year-old Brittany Higley, from Myrtle Beach S.C., begins the long wait at the Red Cross shelter at Socaste High School in Socaste, S.C., Thursday. Socaste is 10 miles inland from Myrtle Beach. Digital Photo by Bob Rives/Staff

Most have heeded South Carolina Gov. David Beasley's mandatory evacuation order

Web-posted Sept. 5, 1996 at 9 p.m.

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Robert Pavey
Columbia County Bureau Chief

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Like an unwelcome ghost from a not-so-distant past, Hurricane Fran skirted a near-empty Grand Strand coastline Thursday night and stirred painful memories of a similar storm just seven years ago.

``After Hurricane Hugo, we had two trees left,'' lamented Mary McAlister of Surfside Beach, who joined about 800 others in a Red Cross shelter at Socastee High School a few miles inland. ``It was scary then and it's scary now.''

But despite the fear, and the ongoing forecasts that indicated Myrtle Beach would suffer a Hugo-like knockdown punch, Fran's whirling winds and northward momentum carried the giant storm to a landfall up the coast in North Carolina.

People begin to fill up the emergency Red Cross shelter in the cafeteria at Socaste High School in Socaste, South Carolina, just inland from Myrtle Beach, S.C., Thursday.Digital Photo by Bob Rives/Staff

Before sundown, as last-minute evacuees planned their getaways, James Rockford made last-minute preparations to shield his business, Whispers Bar on Ocean Boulevard, from the winds.

``We're getting pretty used to this,'' he said while fitting plywood over plate-glass windows. ``We already had the wood, we just needed some extra nails this time.''

The storm, after threatening Charleston, then Georgetown and eventually Myrtle Beach and the coastline north toward Wilmington, N.C., hovered offshore most of Thursday, heralding its arrival with dense, windblown rain.

By midday, police and state troopers reinforced by uniformed National Guardsmen in Humvees and troop transports had closed U.S. Highway 17 from the Winyah Bay bridge in Georgetown all the way to the North Carolina state line.

Although most heeded S.C. Gov. David Beasley's mandatory evacuation order for coastal areas, emergency management officials feared many residents chose not to evacuate experiencing Hurricane Bertha, a minimal storm.

A woman and two children play on the beach in the town of Myrtle Beach Thursday, September 5, 1996, at 11:30 a.m., one and one-half hours before the mandatory curfew for all residents of the city to stay in their houses or shelters until Hurricane Fran passed.Digital Photo by Bob Rives/Staff

``You may not see a lot of people on the street right now, but there's probably 20 people you could throw a rock to right now,'' said restaurant worker Bryan Addams, who strolled Ocean Boulevard before the storm.

Others were happy to evacuate, fearing the worst. ``We thought about trying to stay home, but were too scared,'' said Bonnie Hornbuckle, who moved to Myrtle Beach this spring from Kokomo, Ind.

The eye of Hurricane Fran is seen off the Florida coast through the co-pilot's window of the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconaissance Squadron, 403rd Airlift Wing, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 1996. Fran is expected to hit the South Carolina coast near Myrtle Beach late Thursday night, about 100 miles north of Charleston. (AP Photo/Chip East)

Her granddaughter, 5-year-old Loran Patton, said she is already weary of hurricanes, having fled from Bertha just a few weeks ago. ``Ever since Bertha, my life just hasn't been the same,'' she said. ``I don't want to get killed.''

Although Hurricane Fran's powerful winds promised widespread devastation and a broad inland swath of downed trees and flooding, residents farther south toward Charleston were relieved to have been spared a second hit.

Hugo, a Category IV storm with 140 mile-per-hour winds, devastated Charleston when it rolled ashore at midnight Sept. 21, 1989 after following a track similar to Fran's. Hugo caused more than $8 billion in damages and killed 35 people during its meandering trek through the Caribbean and the Southeast.

``I feel bad for the people wherever it hits, but I've got to say: I''m glad it ain't us again,'' said Philip ``Duck'' Dukes, a plant pathologist from Bowman, S.C., a few miles inland from Charleston. ``We paid our dues last time.''