Florence's last act: a likely record flood on the coast of South Carolina

GEORGETOWN, S.C. – Eleven days ago, Lee Gantt was attending a Hurricane Florence party in his Georgetown neighborhood, where it is rumored that some houses have not been flooded since the Sampit River since their construction before the American Revolution. She will spend Tuesday watching the nearby river rise from the heavy rains of Florence and see if the luck ends up dying on his house built on Front Street in 1737.

"We thought it could happen, we just left everything above the ground, like in the hurricane, I'm nervous, can not you see me tremble?" she said, extending her arms.

The Sampit is one of five rivers that reach the Atlantic Ocean in and near Georgetown on the coast of South Carolina. And Florence, who arrived as a hurricane The record rainfall spill in North Carolina is expected to cause record flooding downstream in Georgetown County. There is so much water coming that other rivers are not even flooded.

And others are yet to come: the National Hurricane Center said that a large low-pressure area about 300 miles south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, was producing showers and thunderstorms over its northern slope. Forecasters have said it could be a tropical depression as it approaches the coast on Tuesday and it will pour rain, regardless of coastal areas in northern and southern Carolina.

The county has recommended that nearly 8,000 people leave their homes, more than 10% of the population. Authorities expect the waters to flood several bridges, almost cutting off Georgetown County in two and leaving only one freeway outside the ridge scheduled for Thursday morning.

The deluge so slowly swept the Lumber, Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers that the state released detailed flood maps last week.

On Georgetown 's historic waterfront, companies withdrew their inventory and sanded the doors of entry while the waters of Florence were heading toward the ocean, reported WBTW, a CBS subsidiary.

The main business district of the city was busy, but people were leaving. The Tomlinson department store sent an empty truck normally used to store the stocks and the employees rushed to fill everything. The store has never been flooded, but forecasts predict up to 5 feet of water by Thursday.

"The anticipation was nerve-wracking, but I'm glad we had the time to do it," said District Director Kevin Plexico.

Georgetown was positioning ambulances and fire trucks in the busy tourist area along the beaches in case the floods cut off the American highway bridges as planned. On American Highway 17 bridges over the Waccamaw, Pee Dee, and Black Rivers, teams from the Department of Transportation and the National Guard installed 1,000 feet of Aqua dams, which fill with water to protect the highways. flooding.

"This is an unprecedented event for South Carolina, especially in this region," said Christy Hall, secretary of the South Carolina Transportation Department.

Exhausted emergency officials said they were only living in Florence for more than two weeks.

"The work has been done," said Georgetown Mayor Brendon Barber. "We just need to pray."

Upstream of Horry County, floodwaters flooded nearly 1,000 homes near Conway as the Waccamaw River slowly headed for a 4-foot ridge above the record level established two years ago Hurricane Matthew.

In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper said that it was time to focus on recovery. "Florence is gone but the devastation of the storm is still with us," Cooper said at a press conference.

About 400 routes through North Carolina have remained closed due to the storm that has killed at least 46 people since it arrived on the coast on September 14th. The teams reopened the main closed motorways in the storm. Interstate 95 was reopened Sunday night for the first time since the floods, and Cooper said Monday that a previously closed portion of Interstate 40 had reopened earlier than planned.

Power outages and the number of people in shelters were also decreasing. About 5,000 people were without electricity, compared to about 800,000, and about 2,200 people were in shelters, compared to about 20,000, the governor said.

In Washington, legislators have looked at nearly $ 1.7 billion in new money for disaster relief and recovery. And the economic research firm Moody's Analytics estimated that Florence had caused about $ 44 billion worth of damage and a production loss, one of the 10 most expensive hurricanes in the United States. The worst disaster, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, cost $ 192.2 billion in dollars today. Hurricane Harvey last year cost $ 133.5 billion.