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COLUMBIA – Governor Henry McMaster is lifting the evacuation order for Georgetown and Horry counties beginning at 9 am Sunday, allowing evacuees to return home before river overflows block Grand Strand arteries.
The latest McMaster announcement on Saturday night means that all evacuation orders issued before Hurricane Florence will soon be lifted.
It came hours after people were allowed to return to Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester Counties, as well as Edisto Beach, the only part of Colleton County that had been ordered to leave.
Orders were raised for these counties on Saturday noon, after the deterioration of Hurricane Florence in a tropical storm.
More than 760,000 people from Edisto Beach to Little River have been ordered to leave as of Tuesday noon. About 441,000 people actually left the coast, about half of the counties in Georgetown and Horry.
"Hurricane Florence, now a tropical storm, no longer poses an imminent threat to South Carolina," reads McMaster's decree.
The governor asks returning residents to be patient because there will be traffic jams, blocked roads or detours. Do not drive around barricades or use emergency lanes for first responders, he said.
Several main arteries to the Grand Strand are expected to fade on Monday as Florence's waterfalls dumped into the Carolinas spring downstream.
When that happens, the 378 United States, from Columbia to Conway, will become the main entry and exit route for Horry County, Hall said.
The traffic will then move towards the beach of 501 United States. The State Transportation Department builds two temporary dams to keep this road open.
All state offices closed for evacuation will reopen on Monday. School districts whose closure is ordered can now decide locally to reopen it.
The governor's recent decrees, which allow people to return home, do not prevent local officials from imposing a curfew.
Curfews remain in Horry and Georgetown counties, as well as in Andrews, part of Williamsburg County, and in Marion, Dillon, Florence, Chesterfield, Darlington and Marlboro. The curfew hours are different, some of them ordering people to stay on the street at 7 pm at 8 am or 6 pm at 6 am, said the head of the state law enforcement division, Mark Keel.
Follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.
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