22 hours Ago
ORANGEBURG — Tammy Thomas stood in the back door of her North home, watching water inch toward her feet. The hundred-acre Etheredge Millpond some 250 feet away had continued to swell as more than a foot of rain fell in the area on Nov. 14 .
Suddenly, the water began receding — sweeping away debris and the massive tree that had landed next to the house during Tropical Storm Helene two months before. The dam holding back the pond had broken. “We were really lucky,” Thomas said on Nov.
19. Tammy Thompson watched flood waters nearly enter her North home before a dam failure rushed the water away on Nov. 14.
The pond had disappeared, leaving a pair of stranded pontoon boats and hundreds of marooned lily pads behind. As the former Etheredge Millpond water rushed down Bull Swamp Creek toward the North Edisto River, it joined a deluge of historic flooding that ravaged parts of Orangeburg County after sudden and heavy rainfall on Nov. 14.
“I hate that (the dam) busted, but at the same time, I’m glad it did because (the water) would have been in our house,” she said. Others weren't so lucky. Destroyed portions of U.
S. Highway 178 after an Nov. 14 dam failure in Orangeburg County.
The flooding submerged or washed away hundreds of roads in the county, stranding drivers in isolated rural areas with closed and flooded roads in every direction. Two people were killed as the waters swept them away while trapped in their cars. While the dam breaking saved Thomas’ home from flooding, the waters it held back destroyed a 200-foot stretch of U.
S. Route 178 crossing it, carrying refrigerator-sized chunks of asphalt hundreds of feet downstream. Guardrails were twisted across to the other side of the road.
Bridge weight limit signs were torn in half. Nearby roads were buried in sediment, turning paved roads into dirt lanes. Floodwaters destroyed a dam carrying part of U.
S. Highway 178 before rushing downstream towards homes and businesses on Oct. 14.
Across the region, longtime residents said they had never seen anything like what the Orangeburg Times and Democrat has called "The Great Flood of 2024. " Many had no idea heavy rains were coming, let alone record and deadly flooding. In downtown Orangeburg, crews in boats pulled people out of chest-deep water in businesses near the city’s historic Edisto Memorial Gardens.
A worker at Orangeburg Wine and Spirits shows the waterline from record flooding on Nov. 14. At Orangeburg Wine and Spirits near the gardens, employees watched as water inched toward the front doors of the store from the already submerged road outside.
A father and his young daughter had fled their car and taken shelter in the store, when suddenly several feet of water began rushing in from behind the building. “It was coming slowly ..
. then suddenly it came in high,” employee Mital Patel said. “Everything happened in 30, 45 minutes.
...
Water just came from all sides.” Cars in the parking lot were swept away. Store staff watched brown water pile several feet high on the other side of the glass store front, seeping in and rising to waist-level.
Eventually, a rescue squad came to rescue those inside. Almost a week later, workers were stretching plastic over the bottom two shelves throughout the store and ordering replacements for all the liquor that had been submerged. Patel and all those working that night had lost their cars to the storm.
A worker at Orangeburg Wine and Spirits shows the waterline from record flooding on Nov. 14. “We were very shocked,” Patel said.
“We never expected this much water.” All along the Edisto in downtown Orangeburg, crews loaded debris from stores and businesses into dumpsters. Private security stood armed outside the nearby Walmart, as workers prepared to reopen the store.
Several businesses in the worst-hit area of the city hoped to be open within a couple of weeks. Crews clear damaged goods and material out of an Orangeburg Dollar General damaged by historic flooding. Others feared the wait would be much longer.
At a bend in the river near Shillings Bridge Road — about halfway between North and Orangeburg — 24-year-old Sunny Carter and two friends searched for anything salvageable from her great-grandmother’s house, which had been flooded with 2 feet of water even on its high foundations. Pebbles and pavers from her great-grandmother’s flower beds and a broken bird bath were spread across the property where the rushing water had left it. The scent of mold, already growing thick on furniture and walls in the home, drifted toward the road.
Record floodwaters inundated homes on Shillings Bridge Rd in Orangeburg County after record rainfall on Nov. 14. “It’s a little depressing, but I’m just glad she wasn’t here,” Carter said.
“That’s the main thing.” Carter takes care of her great-grandmother in Columbia as she receives hospice care. The two are each other's only family, and Carter was hoping to inherit the home someday.
Her great-grandmother did not have flood insurance. “She’s devastated,” Carter said. “She’s always talking about, ‘I want to go home.
’ She wanted to be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I really wanted that for her. I don’t know if she’ll be here next year.
And now we can’t do that.” Even with the river snaking just behind the home, Carter said the family had never seen anything like this in the nearly 40 years since the house was built. Mold had already began growing in a flood-stricken Orangeburg County home a week after record rainfall on Nov.
14. As she sent one of her friends back into the house to grab her great-grandmother’s portrait and grandfather clock, Carter said she hoped to receive some sort of federal assistance to help recover . “We’re just cleaning up right now,” she said.
“I don't know, I've never dealt with any of this before.”.
