10 days after hurricane, fresh chaos as rivers rise
YAUHANNAH, S.C. >> More than a week ago, pastor Willie Lowrimore and some of his congregants stacked sandbags around their South Carolina church to protect it from the fury of Hurricane Florence.
They moved the pews to higher ground and watched anxiously for days as the nearly black, reeking water from the swollen Waccamaw River rose, even though the hurricane was long gone. Finally, before dawn Monday, the water seeped around and over the sandbags, flooding the sanctuary.
“I’m going to go one day at a time,” Lowrimore said as he sat in a rocking chair listening to the river rush by, ruining the church he built almost 20 years ago. “Put it in the Lord’s hands. My hands aren’t big enough.”
Ten days after Florence came ashore, the storm caused fresh chaos Monday in Yauhannah and elsewhere across South Carolina, where rivers kept rising and thousands more people were told to be ready to evacuate.
Authorities urged up to 8,000 people in Georgetown County, on the South Carolina coast, to be prepared to flee from potential flood zones. A “record event” of up to 10 feet of flooding was expected to begin Tuesday near parts of the Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers, county spokeswoman Jackie Broach-Akers said.
Places along the waterfront in Georgetown were predicted to flood for the first time since record keeping began before the American Revolution.
“We are still getting phone calls from people who don’t know what is going on,” said Georgetown County Emergency Management Director Sam Hodge.
In North Carolina, where Florence made landfall, Gov. Roy Cooper said the state was moving from an emergency response mode to full-time recovery from the storm.
“Florence is gone, but the storm’s devastation is still with us,” Cooper said at a news conference.
About 400 roads across the state remained closed due to the storm that has claimed at least 46 lives since slamming into the coast Sept. 14.