South Carolina absorbed the best punch a nearly spent Hurricane Charley could muster Saturday, leaving residents along the northern coast bruised but relieved it wasn’t worse.

The storm first hit the coast at about 9:30 a.m. near McClellanville, where devastating Hurricane Hugo took direct aim 15 years ago. But Charley, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph mostly offshore, wasn’t another Hugo.

Authorities reported no storm-related deaths. Structural damage ranged from ripped awnings to yawning holes in hotel walls in Myrtle Beach. Nearly 135,000 homes along the coast lost power during the storm, though power was restored for many later in the day.

The storm wasn’t the same Charley that hit Florida, racking up billions of dollars of damage on Friday. Instead, it behaved like a Category 1 storm is supposed to, causing scattered damage rather than widespread catastrophe.

“Mother Nature has spared us,” Gov. Mark Sanford said during a visit to Conway. “We were very, very fortunate we didn’t have the wind and storm surge Florida had.”

Downed trees briefly closed U.S. 17 in Georgetown County, and the Green Sea-Floyds shelter in Horry County lost power for a while with 167 people inside.

At the peak of the storm, nearly 2,400 people were housed in 36 Red Cross shelters, according to emergency officials.

While rain came down in sheets at times, the storm blew through quickly enough that rain-fall totals were only three to five inches in most areas along the Grand Strand. Many areas got more rain from Tropical Storm Bonnie on Thursday.

Despite those back-to-back soakings, river flooding is unlikely, according to Bud Badr, chief hydrologist at the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

Insurance adjusters who raced into affected areas Saturday afternoon found few serious problems, according to Allison Dean Love of the S.C. Insurance News Service. “Most damage is minor,” Love said, “mostly auto claims from flooding or trees down.”

She said it was too early to give a damage estimate.

In Myrtle Beach, the second-floor interior hallway was visible from the parking lot at the Holiday Inn on Ocean Boulevard. There, a portion of the wall had been ripped off. At the Schooner II Beach & Resort, a huge section of the exterior wall fell, littering surrounding parking lots and the street.

Fortunately, an estimated 180,00 tourists and residents heeded Sanford’s mandatory evacuation implemented late Friday.

Elsewhere in Myrtle Beach, trees fell on homes and windows were broken, but most buildings were left unscathed.

Charley arrived just late enough to miss the early morning high tide, so storm surge created few problems other than beach erosion.

In Charleston, joggers were out on The Battery and strollers wandered the downtown historic district early in the afternoon. Vendors were setting up their wares at the City Market.

Just hours before, the poorly defined eye came ashore near McClellanville, then scraped up the coast, as if the state was refusing to let Charley in. The eye finally crossed over onto land near the North Carolina border.

Wind gusts registered 64 mph at Isle of Palms, 58 at Folly Beach, 58 at the North Myrtle Beach Airport, 45 mph at the Springmaid Pier and 65 mph on north Ocean Boulevard, according to reports to the National Weather Service. The highest ground-level wind over land was 80 mph in New Hanover County, N.C.

Nothing like the 130 mph winds measured in Bulls Bay during Hugo.

“I don’t think this was comparable to Hugo by any means,” said Lyn Scott in McClellanville. “The noise alone in Hugo sounded like people were driving tractors on your roof.”

Shortly after noon, tourists began driving back into Myrtle Beach. Sanford suspects it was a different set of visitors from those who left Friday during the mandatory evacuation. The people who had planned to leave on Saturday just left a day early, he hypothesized.

“A lot of people were heading into Myrtle Beach with no change in their reservations,” Sanford said. “I guess we were as lucky as you can get as far as the timing with it not being in the middle of the week.”

Businesses along the Grand Strand weren’t so sure about that.

Bargain Beachwear on Kings Highway was one of the first businesses to open its doors after the storm passed, even before vehicles were allowed back into the area.

“It’s the end of the season, and we need every second,” said Efrat Shahar, who opened the store around 2:30 p.m. “We haven’t had that good of a season.”

Cliff Arthur, director of operation for the Bonefish Grill restaurant, was hoping electricity would return in time for the dinner crowd Saturday.

“We closed early (Friday night) and did about half of (the business) we normally do,” he said. But he felt fortunate no damage was done to his building or to the landscaping.

“We actually were pretty lucky.”

Reach Holleman at (803) 771-8366 or jholleman@thestate.com. Staff writers Jennifer Talhelm, Ben Werner and John Drake contributed to this report.