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Haley: Floods coming to Little Pee Dee, Waccamaw
County gives post-storm updates Officials will meet with FEMA next week BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com During Sumter County Council’s meeting on Tuesday, Sumter County Administrator Gary Mixon said the county has started repairs following Hurricane Matthew and officials will discuss storm damage with Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel on Oct. 18. Mixon said Crestwood High School served as an emergency shelter to
about 85 people, all county residents, as of Saturday before the shelter was closed because of limited power. He said the location was chosen because of its easy access to people from coastal areas coming into Sumter. Mixon said Sumter Parks and Recreation building was opened as a shelter on Sunday, housing at most 16 people, and was officially closed on Tuesday. He said only seven roads – Zoar Church Road, Bush Branch Road, Huckabee Road, Furman Cove, Freddie Lane, Pritchard Lane and Gibbs Dairy Road – sustained significant damage as a result of the event and county public works has been able to make repairs so
far. Hopefully, public works can complete all of the repairs without bringing in a contractor, he said. In other news, county council approved first reading of a request to amend the county zoning and development ordinance to permit solar energy systems as conditional uses in light industrial-warehouse, heavy industrial, agricultural conservation, conservation preservation and agricultural conservation-10 zoning districts in the county. Sumter City-County Planning Department Director George McGregor said the potential plans for solar energy
everyone up by Thursday or Friday,” Chase said. “It may be longer for those with the worst damage or when there are other issues.” Mosier said more help is on the way. “We have a ton of resources coming from all over the states and as far away as Canada,” he said. Mosier said crews coming
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday at noon the state has had three fatalities as a result of Hurricane Matthew. However, as most of eastern South Carolina cleans up after the storm, Haley said the state will be dealing with major flooding along the Little Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers during the next few days or even weeks. As of Tuesday at noon, she said four islands along the coast were still closed, but access to Hilton Head Island was expected be open by mid-day. HALEY Haley said 66 percent of the people who were without power immediately after the storm now have power, but almost 300,000 were without electricity. At one point, 860,000 people were without power in the Palmetto State, she said. “Don’t ever say South Carolina is not resilient,” she said. “We have had two winter storms, two floods and a hurricane turning into a flood, at least for this part we can be prepared and pre-positioned.” She said it is “heartbreaking” that so many people who are just recovering from the flood a year ago have been “sent back to square one.” Department of Natural Resources Director Alvin Taylor said more flooding is to come. “We are waiting on the water,” he said. “Some of it is here and more is to come, particularly on the Waccamaw.” Nichols, a small community on the Little Pee Dee has been particularly hard hit, he said. Taylor said the Little Pee Dee should peak in the next 24 to 48 hours, but it could be a week or more before the Waccamaw Rivers reaches its highest flows. He asked residents not to go site-seeing along the rivers. “With the waters so high, your wake can do damage to people’s homes,” he said. In addition, McLeod Regional Medical Center in Florence reported low water pressure, and Taylor said National
SEE POWER, PAGE A5
SEE HALEY, PAGE A5
SEE COUNTY, PAGE A5
Utilities mobilize to restore power
KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
A pine tree is supported by a power line on West Hampton Avenue on Monday morning. The tree has since been removed and power restored to the neighborhood.
Duke, Black River hope to have everyone on by Sunday BY JIM HILLEY jim@theitem.com Duke Energy hopes to have power restored to almost all residents in its service area by Sunday, according to Communications Manager Ryan Mosier. “We are making steady progress through the day across the state,” he said Tuesday afternoon. He said there were still
about 6,000 customers in Sumter County that were without power. “That’s down significantly from Sunday, but that number is slowly coming down throughout the day,” he said. According to the Duke Energy outage map at www. duke-energy.com, Lee County had 2,634 Duke Energy customers without power and Clarendon County had 2,236 as of Tuesday afternoon.
Black River Electric Co-op is expecting to have most of its customer’s power restored by Friday, said Brenda Chase, director of marketing and government relations. “We have almost all of Kershaw and Lee counties restored,” she said. Crews from other cooperatives as far away as Arkansas will be coming to the Sumter area, she said. “We hope to have almost
Pilgrim’s giving away free chicken, water and ice BY RICK CARPENTER rick@theitem.com If you didn’t read about it on Facebook, one of your friends told you about it, and you probably thought it was too good to be true. It’s true: Pilgrim’s has been donating 10 pounds of chicken to each person who went to the plant Monday and Tuesday. The plant even grilled 15,000 pounds of chicken on Monday. Besides free chicken, Pilgrim’s is giving away six to eight bottles of water and 8 to 10 pounds of ice. “What does this mean to me?” Pinky Walker said. “It means I will eat tonight and tomorrow.”
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Walker was toting a 10-pound bag of chicken breasts and a plastic sack of bottled water. Walker said she saw the storm coming and decided not to fill the refrigerator before the storm because the food would likely spoil if she lost power. “I just lost some vegetables, but I didn’t buy a lot (of perishables) before the storm,” she said. Doug Sanders said Hurricane Matthew hit the southeast part of the U.S. hard. “Every time Sumter gets hit like this, it’s amazing to see everyone in Sumter helping one another like this,” Sanders said. Pilgrim’s Complex Manager Tim
Singleton said the idea struck the management team on Saturday morning when the main plant lost power. While generators kept the frozen meat iced, production lines were shut down, and disSINGLETON tribution trucks couldn’t get out because of fallen trees on roadways. “We didn’t have to throw anything away,” Singleton said. Instead, they fired up grills and cooked chicken and donated it to anyone stopping by. Pilgrim’s notified first responders, including police and sheriff’s officers, and
DEATHS, B5 Joseph S. Sublette Billy C. Hatchell Lila Belle B. Delk Richard A. Lamer Betty Wilson Leon B. Holloway Jr. Beulah Lee D. Reid
Sara G. Jones Lawrence A. Brown Crystal Varney Sophie B. Fleming Lucinda G. Moody Heidi D. Harris
teachers and schools of the giveaway. Before long, that message went viral on Facebook to the amazement of people stopping by. And once the roads were cleared, other Pilgrim’s plants in North Carolina, Georgia, VirOMOTOLA ginia and West Virginia began shipping water and ice as well as more chickens to Sumter. Plant Manager Sola Omotola said the plant had given away more than 60,000 pounds of chicken through
SEE CHICKEN, PAGE A5
WEATHER, A8
INSIDE
ANOTHER NICE DAY
3 SECTIONS, 18 PAGES VOL. 121, NO. 302
Perfect fall weather today with lots of sunshine and warm temps; tonight, cool and partly cloudy.. HIGH 75, LOW 52
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