Encountering a new phase: South Carolina enters disastrous wave of flooding
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Encountering a new phase: South Carolina enters disastrous wave of flooding
South Carolina was expecting sunshine Tuesday after days of inundation, but it will still take weeks for the state to return to normal after being pummeled by a historic rainstorm. Even as the rain tapered off, officials warned of the likelihood of new evacuations — such as one ordered Monday afternoon in one of two towns east of downtown Columbia where two dams were breached. South Carolina authorities mostly switched Monday from search and rescue into “assessment and recovery mode,” but Gov. Nikki Haley warned citizens to remain careful as a “wave” of water swelled downstream and dams had to be opened to prevent catastrophic failures above low-lying neighborhoods.
This is a Hugo-level event. We didn’t see this level of erosion in Hugo. … This water doesn’t fool around.
Maj. Gen. Robert Livingston, head of the South Carolina National Guard, referring to the September 1989 hurricane that devastated Charleston, S.C.
President Obama also signed a disaster declaration on Monday, making federal aid available to the southern state that has been drenched with a level of rain that — as Haley put it — the region has not seen in 1,000 years. A tropical air mass over much of South Carolina starting Thursday dumped 14 inches of rain, a new record, according to the National Weather Service. A solid week of rainfall has killed at least 10 people in South Carolina and two in North Carolina, and sent about 1,000 to shelters.
