How it looks — and smells — in Socastee after mini ‘tsunami’ floods homes
Suzy Centeno Hanson slowly opens the front door to her Socastee home — one full of almost-stagnant water from flooding after Hurricane Florence.
Hanson quickly waves her hand in front of her face from the stench. After ripping open the packaging of a brand-new mask, she puts the mask and bright orange gloves on. Then she carefully steps inside where water is less than a foot deep, pointing to a fish swimming across her living room.
“Ew,” she said. “There’s a lot of mold already.”
The smell from the floodwaters — which is full of sewage and dead critters and fish — does not go unnoticed. Breathing in the stench long enough will begin to burn the throat and make your eyes water.
Tuesday morning was the first time Suzy Centeno has returned to her family’s home in Rosewood Estates since flooding took over the neighborhood more than a dozen days ago. They lost everything two years ago after Hurricane Matthew, and Hanson knew this time would be worse — so they moved everything out except a piano and an antique desk.
“I even pulled the doors out of the hinges,” Hanson said Tuesday morning. Those doors sit stacked on a table and are now warped from moisture. She’s still paying a FEMA loan from the last flood.
Hanson carefully makes her way through the home, watching her step and opening windows so air can flow through. Wood floorboards float up and bubbles rise to the top of the water each time she steps on the boards just right.
“This is going to be an easy clean up because most of it is out,” she said. “It’s just a matter of the shell of the house.”
Knee-deep water still stands in Hanson’s yard and the road in front of her home. It has receded down Rosewood Drive over the last couple of days, but still covers three of the neighborhood’s main roads.
Just up Rosewood Drive where the water is only ankle-deep in a handful of yards is Suay Quandt, cleaning water from her living room and kitchen. She scoops the muddy water into a dust pan and dumps the pan into a bucket.
“It stinks,” she said as her eyebrows furrow.
Quandt and her husband only took important documents and some clothing. Almost all of the stuff inside their home is destroyed. The freezer and refrigerator were not upright when they returned. And a dirty water mark nearly 3-feet high lines the Sheetrock through the home.
Her husband, Martin Quandt, said they’ve lived in Rosewood since 1979, and he’s never had a flood like the one after Florence. “It looked like a very small tsunami went through the house,” he said.
“The intensity of this — I’ve never seen before,” he said. “We’re gonna start all over.”
Martin Quandt, 77, said the recovery will be long, and it’s not something he looks forward to at his age. His wife is 71.
“It’s pretty hard to start over at that age, but we’re going to do it,” he said.
This story was originally published October 2, 2018 at 3:47 PM.