SC officials urge preparation as hurricane season gets underway

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Hurricane season is just getting underway for 2024, and South Carolina leaders say they are as prepared as ever for a major storm this year.

But they stress individual South Carolinians need to be ready, too.

On Thursday, Gov. Henry McMaster gathered emergency management officials, state agency heads, and other stakeholders at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center to test South Carolina’s emergency operations plan for this hurricane season, which began last Saturday and runs through the end of November.

“I just hope we don’t have to put it into play, but as they say, hope is not a plan, so we are planned and ready to go if necessary,” Major General Van McCarty, South Carolina’s adjutant general, said.

During their two-hour tabletop exercise, state officials ran through their plan to respond to a major hurricane, using a category 4 as their example, the same as the devasting Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

“If we are smart and careful with the talent, planning, and experience we’ve had, we ought to be fine,” McMaster told reporters at a news conference following the exercise. “But if a hurricane comes, it is going to destroy something, so we need to be ready.”

For coastal residents, officials emphasized the necessity to know the state’s new evacuation zones and where they live within them.

“We adjusted the current evacuation zones to better define risk, to allow for greater flexibility, especially for lower-impact storms. We want to evacuate those who are truly at risk and not over-evacuate, which can certainly lead to noncompliance in future evacuations,” South Carolina Emergency Management Division Director Kim Stenson said.

Also new this year is the state’s plan for opening shelters during a major hurricane.

Shelters run by the Red Cross and South Carolina Department of Social Services (DSS) will be located at larger sites in Orangeburg, Ridgeland, and Florence, further away from the coast than they may have been in past years.

“The mass transportation plan would be in effect, so folks who didn’t have transportation could use the buses,” DSS Director Michael Leach said. “There potentially could be local shelters available, but again, in a major hurricane, you know, if you need to evacuate, you need to evacuate, you need to go further.”

State leaders stressed hurricane preparation isn’t just important for coastal South Carolinians but all South Carolinians.

“The entire state is vulnerable to the effects of a hurricane, and certainly the entire state can be affected by hurricane-force winds and excessive rainfall, so it’s not just a coastal event, and we all need to keep that in mind,” Stenson said.

And if an evacuation requires lane reversals on South Carolina’s interstate system, the Department of Transportation said it is prepared to do that, even with all the roadwork going on across the state right now.

South Carolinians can find SCEMD’s full 2024 hurricane guide online by clicking here.

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