South Carolina: Overview

Everything in the main manual and the skill guides applies in South Carolina exactly as written. What’s different here is the specific hazard profile and the state, local, and legal context around it. This page is the starting point; the other three pages under South Carolina go deeper on laws, local resources, and the data behind the risks named here.

Hurricane Hugo: record storm tides on the East Coast

Hurricane Hugo made landfall just north of Charleston at Sullivan’s Island around midnight on September 22, 1989, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 135-140 mph. It killed 35 people in South Carolina and caused $7 billion in damage, and the storm surge at McClellanville reached more than 20 feet, the highest storm tides ever recorded along the East Coast up to that point. See the Risks page for the full data.

The 2015 floods: a statistical 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event

In October 2015, a slow-moving storm system dropped rainfall so extreme that several areas of the state, Columbia among them, met the statistical threshold for a 1-in-1,000-year event, with Columbia recording 17 inches of rain in just 17 hours on its wettest day on record. The flooding killed 19 people, nearly 50 dams failed or were breached statewide, and emergency crews conducted more than 1,500 water rescues.

What this means for how you use the rest of this manual

The manual’s Tier structure and the skill guides apply without modification. What’s different in South Carolina: coastal households need real hurricane evacuation planning that accounts for storm surge specifically, not just wind, and households anywhere near a dam or in a floodplain should know that a “1,000-year” rainfall statistic describes probability, not a guarantee of infrequency, South Carolina has already experienced one.

Sources

• Hurricane Hugo deaths, damage, and storm surge: National Weather Service; National Academies Press
• 2015 South Carolina floods, rainfall, and death toll: NOAA Climate.gov; NWS Service Assessment