By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Thousands of South Carolina families will have a far different holiday season from usual thanks to October floods that inundated a swath of the state from the Midlands through the Pee Dee and Lowcountry.
As of this morning, only one river — the Waccamaw near Conway– was above flood stage some three weeks after trillions of gallons fell on the Carolinas over three days. S.C. Emergency Management Division spokesman Derrec Becker said the Santee fell out of flood stage Thursday night and the Waccamaw is expected to return to normal levels soon.
- BY THE NUMBERS: Get an idea of the massive impact of the flood by looking at available data. Click here.
Meanwhile for thousands, the recovery continues with some families facing what state Sen. Ronnie Sabb, D-Williamsburg, calls a “new normal,” especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“Unfortunately, there are likely to be situations where folks don’t have the opportunity to enjoy their homes — their normal environment for the family during that special time of year,” he said. “There will be a new normal for a number of our citizens and residents.”
Kevin Shwedo, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles executive director who was named disaster recovery czar by Gov. Nikki Haley on Monday, said he didn’t believe every South Carolinian impacted by the disaster would be in a permanent home by Christmas, two months from now. It could be at least six months — or more — before recovery efforts conclude, he said.
“The best thing we can do as a community is to get our arms around those people who may not be in their permanent housing and give them the Christmas they deserve,” he said. “We can do that as a community.”
Lots of people need help
Across South Carolina, people who were flooded out of their homes are living with family members, friends and neighbors, or they have found a place to rent an apartment, home or motel. Some, such as people whose homes were on slabs near the Black River in Kingstree, never will return because rules will require them to be elevated at prohibitive costs. For others, it will take months to rip away moldy debris and repair it or build something new. Yet others without flood insurance in places where flooding was never expected, such as in Forest Acres in the Midlands, will have tough choices of whether to get loans to rebuild while paying existing mortgages or to come up with some other solution.
“The construction industry is going to be really good for the next six months,” said Tim Ervolina, president and CEO of the United Way Association of South Carolina.
The association, which operates the state’s 2-1-1 helpline, is being swamped with calls from people wanting help to find a meal or a place to stay. In September, the month before the flood, it received about 20,000 calls. Already this month, it has far exceeded that number. Ervolina said he expected his staff would field 40,000 to 50,000 calls for help by the end of the month — one of the few indicators available now of how many people are hurting.
“We already had an affordable housing crisis in this state before the storm,” Ervolina said. “When you think about the affordable housing units we lost, that makes the inventory of affordable housing worse.”
Disaster recovery officials say they’re still gathering data to determine the devastation to the state and should have more numbers soon.
“We’ve got to tap every available resource we can to see what and how we can help,” Sabb said of state and federal efforts.
Damage permeates Williamsburg County
In rural Williamsburg County, former newspaper editor Linda W. Brown of Kingstree shares that life has changed for many who might not have flood damage.
The county library, for example, will be closed for two months.
“There was two feet of water throughout the building,” she said. “The insurance adjuster is insisting that the books have to remain in the library while the carpet and baseboards are replaced. ServPro is having to work around enough boxed books to fill a large U-Haul truck.”
James Dukes, who lives on a family farm in the Bloomingville community between Kingstree and Andrews, relates that peanuts, cotton and soybeans have been ruined throughout agricultural areas impacted by flooding. And this comes after a drought wiped out much of the corn crop, he added. Officials have estimated crop losses total more than $300 million across the state.
“I’ve heard older folks say they’ve never seen anything like this,” Dukes said. “It’s worse than Hurricane Hugo. A lot of these houses need to be gutted out and aired out. It’s going to be quite some time before some people get into their homes.”
If in doubt, register with FEMA
Shwedo, the new disaster recovery chief, urged residents impacted in any way by the flood to register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that they could get help down the road if something like mold developed in the weeks ahead.
“We’ve got a lot of people who have started the enrollment piece with FEMA, but that’s going to end quickly,” he said. “If you’re not enrolled, the bureaucracy is going to kill you.
“We have to get everybody who is even remotely touched registered. If in doubt, register. But if you get lazy [and don’t register] and all of a sudden find mold, there’s nothing anybody can be able to do.”
FEMA currently has 23 disaster recovery centers throughout the state where people can file for help.
- Click here to find the one nearest you.
Shwedo also urged residents who are interacting with FEMA, which has approved more than $45 million so far in direct aid, to be tough and challenge any claims that are denied.
The first inclination to everyone has got to be rebut it — immediately rebut it because a lot of the people rebutting it are getting money,” he said. “Persistence is going to save a lot of people in this state. None of us should accept no.”
Ervolina agreed, noting that the FEMA that was around 10 years ago after Hurricane Katrina is now smaller and underfunded.
“What we’ve got now is a tightly-controlled group designed to deny more claims than approve them,” he said.
Because FEMA grants generally are limited to $32,000 and loans to $200,000 for those who qualify, people eventually are going to wake up and feel they’ve been slapped across the face with a dead fish, he said. And that’s because FEMA has suffered as federal leaders pushed to shrink government.
“The consequences of that for South Carolina is that the uninsured losses are going to be staggering,” Ervolina predicted, adding that a special supplemental appropriation by Congress could help ameliorate a big part of the crisis.
Most of South Carolina’s U.S. congressmen and both U.S. senators voted against a similar measure to help Hurricane Sandy victims in the Northeast.
“I hope they don’t hold that against us when the time comes,” Ervolina said.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
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