A production of South Carolina ETV.

Funding for this program is made possible in part by Bowater.

Georgia Pacific International Paper.

And Union Camp Corporation.

Announcer> Stay inside and stay safe.

Okay.

Okay.

Windows have begun to blow out in the downtown area.

Chimney bricks are blowing out... Narrator> It's probably a good thing Hugo passed through at night.

If one could only see so much destruction.

Announcer> Trees are down.

The energy of over seven atomic bombs was unleashed on South Carolina as Hurricane Hugo hit home.

Glen Stapleton> That whole day was, looking at all the damage that happened to the people in and around McClellanville and looking at the forest and just, totally unprepared for what I was getting ready to discover.

One of the big surprises to me after we, went up to aerial survey the forest is how widespread the damage was from Charleston all the way up and beyond the Santee River.

And as we flew up to St.

Stephen's.

The damage kept on going.

It was almost as severe there as it was right along the coast of South Carolina.

It just looked as if it just kept right on going and going.

We got on up to St.

Stephen's and, looked over and took a look at, Georgia Pacific's large plywood mill there at Russellville.

And it was so devastated.

You know, that, that had an impact on me b how many millions of dollars Russellville lost as far as the timber industry was concerned.

And it seemed like no matter where you went, any of the mature stands of timber on the Francis Marion was laying on the ground now, knowing at the time that a lot of jobs had been previously dependent on the standing supply of salt... it's very, demoralizing to know what the consequences of this would be.

The consequences.

Over 4 million acres in South Carolina affected Almost 7 billion board feet of timber on the ground.

It's enough wood to build over a half million homes.

The loss to South Carolina's timber industry, a whopping $1 billion, is unprecedented in the history of the nation.

Hurricane Camille, Volcano, Mount St.

Helens, the Yellowstone fires none come even close to matching the number of trees downed by Hugo.

trees.

So much a part of life, we naturally take them for granted.

Still standing.

Trees.

Clean the air, absorb sound, create shade, create beauty.

Trees are harvested for saw timber and pulpwood.

We live in trees and sit on trees and write on trees.

Clearly, the great losses of timber in South Carolina will have a pronounced economic effect which will ripple across the state.

The story of the hurt begins with a private landowner.

Meet the Uzzle family of Holly Hill.

>> Still, the shape of the farm has been very important to us.

It's received a lot of love and care and hard work.

So with this tragedy, it's been a terrific blow.

One that is very hard to recover from.

There's so many aspects of the land and its beauty and watching it, the trees grow and knowing that they were there and knowing that they protected the birds and game and prevented erosion.

All these things are hard to estimate.

It was like money in the bank, but we didn't attempt to kill loot, anything in the bank.

We knew that the line was, we knew that the trees were there and when times demanded it and great need, we used it and used sparingly.

So this is a great loss.

It's like almost a death in the family.

That particular part of my Mitch Uzzle> value is hard to place on timber, but a closer guess is I could give you now would be before the storm, it was probably valued at anywhere from 800 to $1000 per acre.

Now, I might receive $0.10 on the dollar if I'm lucky, and if I can get the good at it all.

80 acres at $1,000 an acre would be $80,000.

That I could say on a financial sheet I was that much poorer, the day after the storm hit.

>> We stopped along, I-20, in Lee County, along Lynch's River.

Narrator> Ed Drayton, hardwood management forester with Sunoco.

Ed> As you can see, this swamp was severely damaged with a lot of trees toppling over.

You can also see the water standing.

This water resulted from the heavy rains that we had during the storm, and the week and a half after the storm.

The water complicates the logging problem.

You can't log in, in this kind of conditions.

This timber will lay here until this swamp dries out next summer, and will maybe not be salvaged at all.

>> And then turn 2 or 3.

Narrator> In places where hardwood logging The work is slow and dangerous.

Mechanized equipment must be left behind.

To further slow this logging operation.

A logger on foot has difficulty in access.

Now he must spend several minutes clearing an area around the tree to make room to work.

(tool whirring) (tool whirring) (tool whirring) Presently, hardwood logging is being slowed by 50%.

This, of course, in the few areas which are dry enough to log.

Pine logging adjacent to Umpwoods Mill in Moncks Corner isn't any easier.

See?

When you get in a bind like that, you, Sometimes you can get it out.

and sometimes you can't get it out.

You'd be losing about, I'd say about a half hour.

When you get in a bind like that, Narrator> While one logger loses time, another faces danger.

The downed trees are under great tension, ready to spring at every cut.

(tool whirring) Umpwoods forest manager John Jamison.

John> Of course, it's nowhere near the wor that were before.

When you leave after a day's work, you don't feel like you've accomplished as much as you have in the past.

Being only able to salvage half of what you did before and then having to leave a lot of valuable material in the woods that normally you would want to utilize to its fullest.

It's sad to see a natural resource rot in the woods.

Realize it's fertilizer for a future generation of trees, but it's, very disappointing to see something that's grown for so long just rot.

This was a wind thrown timber tree cutting, directly from the stump.

You see that the shake, and shatter has developed all the way through.

All the way to the butt of the tree.

In all probability this tree itself will be busted, its entire length.

And in all likelihood.

It will be left, have to be left to rot.

In the woods because it's just non usable.

Because of Hugo related power shortages in Berkeley County, a brownout is presently a monkey wrench and Umpwoods computerized sawmill.

It's memory wiped clear.

The computer has lost track of itself and is spending 18 hundred dollars an hour in the resulting problems.

Even as far north as Florence.

Damage timber is showing up at the sawmill.

Sawmill manager Chip Ingram.

Chip> All right.

This is the defect that w some of our lumber today.

This is called compression failure.

It's actually a fracture or broken fibers in the wood that's created by the strong winds of Hugo.

It shows up as a very fine blond line.

It's very difficult to see.

This can be in trees that have fallen, trees that are broken, as well as trees that are still standing.

This piece is very, very weak at this point due to the broken fibers.

(wood snaps) (blades whirring) Ed Mulcolmfus> Our plan for the short term as much of this timber as we possibly can.

Narrator> West Baker, woodlands manager Ed Mulcolmfus.

Ed> The helicopter should allow us to to e Hurricane Camille, the overall percentage was 25%.

That included, pulpwood as well as saw timber.

We think we can far surpass that through the use of the helicopter.

By being able to log even under the wettest kind of conditions.

Because of the storm damaged timber, we have a very hazardous situation for anyone being in the woods, but particularly people using chainsaws.

Many of these trees are under tension.

One tree is laying on another.

There are many, many, many hazards associated with trying to log these areas.

Our answer to, to that problem was to seek the most professional chainsaw operators that we could possibly find.

We have one crew here from Eugene, Oregon, and they are very familiar with logging, damaged timber.

We also have a crew here that we just recently brought over from Sweden.

And these Swedes, they are very professional in the use of a chainsaw.

(tool whirs) It seems hard to believe that even with the best of equipment and skill, only 50% of all these logs will be salvageable.

Elsewhere, using ordinary means of logging, a mere 20 to 25% yield is an optimistic goal.

Tough working conditions and degraded timber are two factors.

Nature is a third.

>> This is a green, green snag broken out.

Call it a snag.

And it is still very green.

This is the cambium layer right here.

And it's very thin layer between the outer bark.

And the inner wood.

It's... It's, growth layer contains the growth layer of the foam layer right next to it.

And, it's very green, moist and healthy.

The snags will hold up a lot longer than, than your broken tops because of the, close proximity and the uptake that they still have their The root system connected, so they're still taking up moisture into the into the sapwood.

This is a broken top, here laying on the ground.

Getting along fairly well in this mis, snag of this, broken top.

This is, this is large ips.

You know, they they've moved along quite well and totally decimated the, the cambium layer.

You can see the difference between that ni layer on the snag.

Go through four different life cycles.

This is a the stage here is the larval stage here in the late larval stage.

And the adult bark beetle lays gets these galleries out and lays its eggs in here.

And these eggs hatch into these larvae.

And then they, they're real small, about the size of a pinhead.

And they grow up to this stage in a matter of about 3 to 4 weeks.

And then they'll pupate, change, and they'll start developing wings.

And here's and here's an adult right here.

This is, this is a large ips beetle.

It's kind of cool today.

So he's not, he's not too happy.

We're going to remove this outer section of bark.

And I suspect that this has, has deteriorated on further into, the, secondary stages, and.

That's correct.

They have this, long insect here is the secondary insect following the ips attack.

It's called a round headed wood bore.

This insect actually bores into the sapwood and begins the, the first stages of, deterioration of the actual wood itself.

Following the attack by the ips.

They interject a blue stain fungus into the sapwood of the tree.

And that's, that's shown here.

This is this bluish green or blue?

Blue, dark black looking stain that's beginning to show up here.

And this is a cross-section which shows a little bit better picture of the effects of the blue stain and what it does, it collapses those cells and then hastens the drying of the tree by, displacing those water conducting cells with the fungus.

Narrator> Dryness reduces the weight of the wood and therefore the price.

Also, wood affected by blue stain fungus doesn't sell well in local markets and doesn't sell at all in the highly profitable foreign markets.

Mike> We've already discussed the initial stages of attack with the various bark beetles, and what we're looking at here has not been damaged by the storm.

But to give you an idea of the final stages of attack, this, this tree is a pulpwood sized pine.

You see the bark's completely deteriorated.

All the cambium is gone.

It's got, wood boring holes all throughout the wood.

This stage of the final stage of the, the deterioration.

The wood is, infested by a number of microorganisms.

You have termites and soft rot fungi, which has completely deteriorated the wood.

It's, at this point in time, utilizable for no product whatsoever.

Narrator> In about 2 to 3 years time, logs as rotten as this one won't even burn.

The window for salvaging this wood, while it is still marketable to the sawmills, is closing in.

Freezing winter weather has helped subdue somewhat extending the push for timber salvage.

Pinewood solid timber will be good until May or June.

Pulpwood can be harvested for yet another year.

Then all of this wood will belong to the uncountable insects and microorganisms already moving in.

There's so much timber down now that was affected by Hugo that I think the, the industry are being more selective on the products that they're taking now.

Your wind thrown trees.

We're, those closer to, have more moisture in them, so they're not so much affected as these broken Thompson balls.

So, they'll last on up, in some cases, 15, 16 months.

I think overall, the total effects, move here, and it's been estimated if an excellent job is done, we'll move about 20%.

But maybe 25% of the total damage.

Timber.

So there's going to be a great deal.

Of, loss.

It's just going to be, left in the woods to rot.

And the, the biggest concern is now is that, we try to get as much of the volume moved as quickly as possible.

And, I think one thing that is of, of a real concern now is that they can try to get as much of this damaged timber as they can possibly get under irrigation systems and sprinkler systems, so that it will be, its longevity will be increased for upwards, you know, a couple of years, especially in the market right now.

It's beginning to get flooded with, timber because of the storm?

Ben Swanda> Well, particularly in the, in of South Carolina, which is primarily the storm damaged area.

It is low wetland, very, very good site index.

But it there's a high water table and we don't have a very large operating window in the Low country to do our reforestation work, our site preparation work.

And, I think this window is going to even be reduced more by the fact that, that our drainage has been affected both a natural and a man-made drainage.

We're not going to be able to get in the woods, as early as we had before and, possibly won't be able to stay as late because the earlier rains are going to, prevent us from operating this heavy machinery in the woods.

The ground is going to stay wetter.

It didn't get any wetter this year.

It's just that the water is going to stay longer.

60 to 80% of the trees in a lot of these areas have been blown down and, destroyed.

And they, they really act as huge pumps during the growing season and move a tremendous number of gallons of water.

So we're not going to have that drying effect that in the natural drainage has been destroyed.

The water is just going to be here longer, and the ground will not dry out faster, satisfactorily, in order to put heavy equipment in here.

What we will have to do now is we will have to do a more intensive job because of the material both standing and on the ground, and that's going to be the biggest change or the biggest difference in, a post-Hugo and pre-Hugo Is that we will just have to have more work to do.

It's going to be a more intensive job because of the litter both standing and on the ground.

And therefore it's going to be more costly.

It's going to take more time and more time.

It's going to mean we're going to need more contractors to do not only our work but some of the work on private lands, >> They face, you know, an entirely different situation than we do.

I mean, physically, the work is the same, but they may not have the resources to do it.

And, you know, with lack of resources, there's going to be lack of equipment oper A lot of their work is just not going to get done.

I don't, I don't see how they're going to possibly, get it done.

There's, there's not enough equipment to completely regenerate everything artificially that we have to do anyway.

I think we're going to have to depend on natural regeneration to a large degree, wherever it may work.

Some landowners may, may wait 4 or 5 or 6 years, and see what kind of stand they get back before they go in there and, and do any artificial bulldozing work.

I think this is this would be a wise decision on their part to see what nature does on its own, rather than go in there and destroy something that nature has well along the way to begin with.

But local timber industry, as all of South Carolina has yet to feel the full impact of Hugo and already another major natural disaster is ready to strike.

(fire roaring, limbs cracking) (fire roars) (Car engine running) ♪ ♪ Wildfires play an important role in the natural life cycle of a forest.

♪ Good forest management calls for intentionally set fires or prescribed burning to control the buildup of fuels on the forest floor.

When fuels are permitted to build up too high, large, unmanageable fires will erupt sooner or later.

It isn't difficult to see the problem facing us.

A normal three or so tons per acre of forest litter are already on the ground.

Now add to that 100 and more tons which Hugo left behind.

Historically, the immensity of fuel buildup has been directly proportional to the immensity of that area's wildfires.

Perry Shatley> As you can see, a tremendous problem right here.

If a fire comes here, we've got a real problem.

We don't have a way in or out safely, if a fires here.

This home is, is, is at high risk, being destroyed by fire.

Look at the amount of fuel on the ground.

There's hundreds of areas, in Berkeley, Charleston County.

that look just like this.

In a fire, in a situation like this is not very manageable.

We will have real problems in dealing with it.

Sure, we've got aircraft that can come in and and put water on it or retardant, but that doesn't stop the fire.

Under real bad fire conditions, there's not a whole lot that can be done here.

We're working it trying to make this situation a little more manageable.

We're bringing heavy equipment in and pushing fire lines around these areas that we know are at high risk, but we can't get them all.

There's just no way to get them all between now and spring, when the fires will be bad.

That's why it's so important for people to be careful with their fires.

The fire that they start a mile from here may burn this home down.

Herman White> You, it's kind of hard to, hard to explain.

You know, things that what could really happen to you know, if we get a major fire, if you ain't been into it.

They just don't believe that this could move this fast, you know, and it's kind of hard you know, when a guy lived there 50 years and said, look, you got to leave your home.

We got a major fire coming at us.

It's just kind of hard to get 'em out of here.

It's the same thing.

with, you know, when the hurricane came through.

It was just, he figured he can ride it through.

You can't do it.

But we just going to have to be extra.

Extra careful because the little bit that we got left.

If you don't be careful, the fire going to take it.

They going to take it all.

Narrator> Wildfires notwithstanding, a ter has been dealt to forest lands of South Carolina.

75% of the unrecoverable loss from Hugo is in timber.

Although legislation is being discussed, not a single relief program exists to help private landowners put the forest back in the ground.

What nature has created it is also destroyed.

We have indeed taken nature's trees for granted their monetary value.

The jobs they create, their beauty.

Mike> They also act and serve as a great noise barrier.

They produce, our protection for, for our ears.

And, in addition to esthetic value, they, they, they make things a lot more pleasant sounding by adding as a buffer, and this, we're sitting here now, approximately, what, 200 yards from the road, and we can hear every truck and car going by.

If this, this stand was still here and 99% of it's gone, that sound would be reduced by two thirds.

Just, just by that barrier effect of the trees.

So we've lost a lot more than just the, the, the timber and, and the hunting and fishing.

We lost a great deal of the way of, of life as we knew it.

But, we have to we have to rebuild.

The forest...is already starting again.

Nature is amazing.

We've got, young seedlings all around us now, and, we'll, we'll begin again.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Funding for this program is made possible, in part, by Bowater, Georgia Pacific, International Paper, And Union Camp Corporation.