The biggest lesson South Carolina might have learned from Hurricane Isabel is to trust itself.

As Isabel slashed at the S.C. coast, state officials nearly ordered a coastal evacuation. But Gov. Mark Sanford, in his first duty as the state's chief emergency-management officer, decided against an evacuation.

Still, Isabel caused planners to teeter along a fine line between safety and overreaction.

"There was a need for elasticity in the system," Sanford said after the storm. "We had the ability to have all the aspects in place without jumping the gun."

Fourteen years ago today, Hurricane Hugo tore into the state and into people's consciousness, assuring millions of South Carolinians never will take a storm for granted again.

With Isabel, South Carolina moved into an elevated state of readiness, activated its emergency-operations center, then watched.

But Isabel, which came ashore in North Carolina, became another in a series of near misses that the Palmetto State's coast has seen recently. Hurricane Floyd in 1999 was the last major storm to graze the state and the last time a coastal evacuation was ordered. Then-Gov. Jim Hodges was criticized for the traffic tangles resulting from the Floyd exodus.

"We're thrilled to death it missed us," said state Adjutant General Stanhope Spears, who commands the S.C. National Guard. "But by going through and preparing, it gave all of us -- the governor and everybody -- an opportunity to work together to see how South Carolina would work, and to work that plan to the benefit of all South Carolinians. It was a great exercise. ... We were just minutes away from execution."

Two full shifts, consisting of 35 to 40 people each, operated at the state emergency center around the clock Monday and Tuesday, before staffing was scaled back. In a full-blown evacuation, 150 people a shift would have swung into action.

Sanford conducted three conference calls with various S.C. mayors. There were two competing interests, he said. "On the one side, all the mayors say, 'Let's be slow about this.' But we had to be prepared to do an evacuation. There's a real-world impact to coastal tourism on one hand, and the tension between that, and the risk of life and limb on the other."

South Carolina prepares for near misses such as Isabel, which tracked across the Atlantic for about two weeks, said John Paolucci, chief of operations at the emergency-operations center. In addition to offering valuable training, the near-miss proved the state's emergency processes and the technology it relies on to make decisions affecting thousands of lives, he said.

"Isabel was deliberate," Paolucci said. "But the forecasting was very deliberate and accurate, too. As it got inside of our decision cycle, we felt sure where it would go, and that allowed the governor to take time.

"It allowed him to delay making a decision that would deploy a huge force (of law enforcement, National Guard troops and others) and also have an economic impact on the areas evacuated."

"It's better when they miss, for sure," said Paul Whitten, Horry County public safety director. "But this was a good training opportunity for us because it gave some of our new staff a chance to go through our preparedness with a sense of urgency. And this was the best-forecasted storm to ever come close to us."