1 year later — Cleanup, damage remain from flooding
From the hill above their home, Leroy and Tina Byrd watched the field across from their porch turn into a pond.
Tina was able to park her newly bought SUV safely above the rush of water. Leroy frantically tried to drive Tina’s beloved, older car up the hill from the Wilson Creek neighborhood, but the car didn’t make it.
Despite months of wading through federal paperwork seeking help, her car still sits where the flood waters reached it. Its tires sunk into the ground, with caked mud along the car’s interior and a line showing that water reached to the windows.
The waters of the thousand-year flood have long since receded, but the damage it caused lingers a year later.
An empty lake
Tall grass has grown up from 20 acres of mud and dirt in the Chinquapin community in the past year.
That 20-acre tract is Lake Chinquapin.
The dam that kept water in the lake sustained heavy erosion as water poured over its spillway into a lake. Leaders of the Chinquapin subdivision decided to drain the lake to ensure the safety of people living along its shores.
Across South Carolina, 51 dams were breached or failed by raging waters, and 23 roads were closed on 23 of them. As of Sept. 23, 11 remain impassable.
No dams in Abbeville, Greenwood, McCormick or Saluda counties were among those breached, but the state Department of Health and Environmental Control identified 17 of them — including Chinquapin’s — as being in need of inspection by a professional engineer.
Jerry Stevens, a member of the Chinquapin Special Tax District board, said the homeowners’ association recently approved closing on a loan that will finance $150,000 in repairs to the dam.
“We had spent a lot of money validating that there are no houses within a hazardous area behind the dam. We identified every structure out there. We did individual studies on each of these houses,” Stevens said. “We had to increase the millage in order to cover the cost of this, but the downside was reduced valuations of homes.”
Stevens said the average impact for the 130 homes is about $70 a year.
‘My baby’
“That was my baby right there,” Tina said Thursday. “I had that car since my 14-year-old boy was still in his car seat in the back.”
She said she had hoped to give her son the car, so he could learn to drive — but the historic flooding drenched the engine, which was rusting by the time she was able to check on it.
“It was in good shape before that,” Leroy said. “If it hadn’t flooded the engine, I could have worked on it and fixed it myself. I should have been able to have it repaired at no cost — that was an act of God, I can’t control that.”
Tina applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency benefits, but was denied. When she appealed the decision, she was denied again. Getting denied was frustrating, she said, but the process alone was draining. She works as a correctional officer at a prison at night, and after sleeping during the day, she attends to her children and other daily chores. Getting through the application process was a burden, she said.
“They just had so much red tape that I had to go through,” she said. “They want me to get this paperwork and that paperwork, and I don’t know where it’s all at.”
‘All possible emergencies’
Derek Kinney, Greenwood County’s emergency services director, said local government agencies were quick to collaborate following the flooding.
“Throughout the county, major areas of impact were Wilson Creek Trailer Park, of course Fox Hollow and a home on Sample Road. All these areas were evacuated and sent to shelters during the event. The Sample Road home is still under repair and non-livable,” he said.
The state Department of Transportation has inspected many bridges in the area, while County Engineer Rossie Corwon has developed a plan to survey and inspect flood areas — a project that would be paid for through the capital projects sales tax on the ballot in November.
“The flood event of October 2015 highlighted the cooperation and interoperability of all responding agencies. City and county officials and departments, EMS, law enforcement, city and county fire services, state agencies and volunteer organizations,” Kinney said. “All agencies and services were represented in the emergency operation center and worked together to plan, respond, mitigate and recover from this event.”
Meanwhile, Greenwood city is about to receive a third knuckleboom loader to speed up debris removal after storms — joining two others in the public works fleet.
The $139,000 expenditure, administrators say, was the result of two things: Years of collaboration with Kinney’s office and significant tree damage in the wake of October’s flooding and a February 2014 ice storm.
“We meet frequently with city, county and municipal officials and utility providers in Greenwood County to ensure proper response to all possible emergencies. Actually, just this week, local officials from Greenwood and Abbeville attended a damage assessment training hosted by the S.C. Emergency Management Division,” Assistant City Manager Julie Wilkie said.
Officials also used the storm to pinpoint areas of improvement, including pre-emptively closing roads and improved communication with county leaders.
Contact staff writer Damian Dominguez at 864-634-7548 or on Twitter @IJDDOMINGUEZ. Contact staff writer Adam Benson at 864-943-5650 or on Twitter @ABensonIJ.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Oct 3, 2016
By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ and ADAM BENSON ddominguez@indexjournal.com abenson@indexjournal.com
Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/1-year-later—-cleanup-damage-remain-from-flooding/article_4029c738-847e-5312-98d3-ab67263ed45f.html