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We build stronger houses, prepare better for disasters and wield computer and communications technology that makes 1989's look quaint.
But all that, experts say, would only partially blunt the devastation of another Hugo-sized hurricane - one that might be increasingly likely to strike the Carolinas.
For every step forward in preparedness, they say, a vulnerability also grows:
A half-million more people to evacuate from the coast.
A rising sea lapping at thousands of square miles of low-lying land.
Eroding beaches, the first line of defense from an Atlantic storm.
Hugo left $7 billion in U.S. property damage, mostly in the Carolinas. Because development has intensified, with houses bigger and more expensive, state officials say a similar storm now could triple that amount.
Those calculations could be tested at any time. Atlantic hurricanes are growing stronger, possibly as part of natural cycles, and climate change models say their frequency and ferocity will only grow.
Eight Category 5 hurricanes roiled the Atlantic in the 2000s, more than in any decade since satellite observations began in the 1960s. North Carolina's coastline, jutting into the sea like a taunt, makes it the nation's fourth-most hurricane-prone state behind Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
A ribbon of sand and mud, the Outer Banks, holds some of the state's most expensive real estate. The Banks are also among the places most vulnerable to sea-level rise and erosion on the East Coast.
A big storm, or several smaller ones, could wipe the barrier islands clean, said Stanley Riggs, an East Carolina University geologist who has studied the N.C. coast for four decades.
"When that mass of water comes across," he said, "it's like a bulldozer blade."
The N.C. Department of Insurance estimates that a Hugo-strength storm that makes landfall near Wilmington would cause at least $5 billion in insured losses to residential property. South Carolina's emergency officials say Hugo today would leave $16 billion to $20 billion in wreckage there.
Hugo's memorable lesson, of course, was that even Charlotte isn't immune.
Forecasters never expected Hugo to cross the Mecklenburg County line, 175 miles from where it made landfall, with near hurricane-force winds. But Duke Energy will attest that Hugo was no fluke.
Just a year ago, Hurricane Ike barreled up from the Gulf of Mexico and - also unexpectedly - chewed up Duke's Midwestern territory. Repairing Ike's damage cost Duke $55million.
Regardless of where they land, hurricanes strike all taxpayers.
Tax dollars pay for emergency responses and rebuilding flood-damaged roads and bridges. They also subsidize the federal flood insurance program that helps coastal property owners rebuild after storms.
Such policies, critics say, only draw more people to build on beaches that hurricanes will whack hardest.
"It's crazy," Riggs said. "And they're there only because the government subsidizes them."
Rising sea level
The N.C. coast faces another threat that could magnify the impact of future storms.
Sea level is expected to rise up to 2.5 feet on the northern coast by 2100, East Carolina University researchers say, in part because portions of the coastal plain are slightly sinking.
More than 2,300 square miles - an area four times bigger than Mecklenburg County - are less than 5 feet above sea level, making them especially vulnerable to storm surges.
Despite that, repeated hurricanes have done little to dissuade people from building on the beach.
"Hurricane Hugo was nothing but urban renewal for the S.C. coast," said Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. "It wiped out a lot of older homes and allowed them to be replaced by bigger new structures. People don't build 1,200-square-foot homes anymore; they have to have 5,000 square feet."
About 8,400 structures, mostly single-family homes, line the 326-mile N.C. ocean shoreline.
The paradox of beachfront development is that it builds permanent structures on ground that doesn't want to stay put. Barrier islands like the Outer Banks continually roll inland like slowly rotating wheels.
"These things are moving, they've been moving throughout their history," said Riggs, the ECU geologist. "The way they move is in these bad storms. A storm is nothing but a big energy machine."
Beach communities face an increasingly desperate need to build up their eroding beaches with sand pumped from offshore or inlets. It's a hugely expensive process that has to be regularly repeated.
N.C. communities are lining up to renourish 125 miles of beach, about 10 times the renourishment needed in the Hugo era.
Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League, an S.C. advocacy group, says the states could discourage unwise development - and save taxpayers' money - by buying up storm-prone property.
"At some point, you've got to exercise some common sense on those things, move things that you can move," she said. "I think there will be some hard choices down the road, and the faster we do that, the better."
Learning from storms
Every hurricane - Hugo, Andrew, Floyd, Katrina - becomes a learning experience for the people trained to respond to them. Hugo offered a textbook full.
Rural communities in South Carolina remained isolated, and on their own, for days. Then-Gov. Carroll Campbell squabbled with state emergency management officials. Miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic slowed evacuations out of Myrtle Beach and Charleston.
In the Charlotte area, nearly 700,000 customers were left without power for up to 18 days. Some 80,000 trees were uprooted. Debris lined city streets in head-high heaps.
"Hugo was a real eye-opener for us - having the personnel you needed, having response packages that are mission-ready," said Doug Hoell, director of the N.C. Division of Emergency Management.
North Carolina got no out-of-state help after Hugo. Now every state belongs to an emergency assistance compact. The state also has created teams devoted to assessing disaster damage, rebuilding public infrastructure and helping disaster victims put their lives back together.
Following the slow evacuations from its coast before Hugo, and again during Floyd, S.C. officials overhauled their evacuation plans. Now I-26 can carry four lanes of traffic from Charleston to Columbia.
But some newcomers might not know they should evacuate. The population of Carolinas' coastal counties grew 37percent, to 2.1 million, between 1990 and 2008.
"It's possible that half the population in a coastal county would not have gone through a Hurricane Hugo," said Jon Boettcher, chief of preparedness for the S.C. Emergency Management Division.
Experts worry especially about the people - sick, disabled or without cars - who can't leave before wind and water rise. And one in five U.S. households relies solely on cell phones that, while handy for their ability to send text messages, can't easily be recharged when power's not available.
"We certainly feel we're going to be hit by a big one sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later to be honest about it," Hoell said.
"We adhere to the philosophy that it only takes one."
