As residents grapple with Waccamaw River’s flooding, many remember similar struggles with Hurricane Floyd

Tammy Lambert tucked a bag of lettuce inside her coat before wading out onto Waccamaw Drive. Samantha Scroggins helped her brother and his friends load her new couch onto a jon boat and ferry it to dry land. Larry Sanders packed his woodworking tools and anything else of value into a U-Haul and utility trailer.

By Monday afternoon, waist-deep water covered their street, forcing residents of this riverfront road near the U.S. 501 bridge to collect what they could before the Waccamaw River rose much higher.

“It hasn’t been this bad since Floyd,” said Sanders, a 66-year-old convenience store owner who moved to Waccamaw Drive in 1999, two months before Hurricane Floyd drenched the Conway area, flooding many communities.

Sixteen years later, the showers of Hurricane Joaquin and another weather system are reminding many residents of Floyd’s destruction.

“It’s tough,” said Scroggins, who moved into her home just two weeks ago. “But you know, you’ve just kind of got to do it.”

Scroggins grew up on Waccamaw Drive and remembers Floyd’s flooding forcing her family to take jet skis to the mainland so they could get to school. As she made her last recovery trip Monday afternoon, she grabbed a bottle of wine and gave a case of beer to her brother and his friends for their help.

“This is our second trip today,” she said. “We already moved the TV and the bed and everything else.”

Unlike some of their neighbors, Lambert and her partner John Watson have only been living in their “Clemson house” for a couple of years. The Tiger orange two-story home with purple trim has the Clemson University name emblazoned on the front in between two paws. It stood in a pool of the Waccamaw Monday.

Lambert and Watson had already removed their Social Security cards, birth certificates and other important documents. On their final trip, she grabbed a salad mix. He carried a beer and a bottle of V8.

“It’s so bad,” Lambert said as she looked at her home. “And it’s only going to get worse.”

In preparation for the rising river, local officials have brought in outside help.

Two dozen National Guard members arrived in Conway Monday morning to search for any residents that may be stranded by flood waters.

Conway Mayor Alys Lawson said the agency also brought three high-water vehicles that will allow the guard to access areas unreachable by the city’s rescue crews.

“What we’re most concerned with now is public safety,” she said, “and making sure that no one is isolated in areas that have no ability to get out.”

Roads in and around Long Avenue are closed because of flooding and the guard will check on residents in those areas, Lawson said, as well as people living in secluded low-lying neighborhoods in the southern part of the city near U.S. 378.

When the water finally recedes, Lawson said, then officials can begin assessing damages. She pointed out that the city is in a better position this time around. After Floyd, some of the homes that were in the most dangerous locations were torn down and the city implemented new building codes for construction in flood-prone areas.

“Just like with Floyd,” she said. “It was a very lengthy cleanup and takes the community and the city all working together.”

For the Waccamaw Drive residents who lived through Floyd, the experience left some better prepared.

Sanders, the convenience store owner, raised his home 16 feet. He cleared out the important items on the lower floors.

“The important part is up there,” he said. “If I could get in and out I could stay.”

Jerry Hardy and his wife, Tracey, tore their old home down after the 1999 disaster and rebuilt in the same spot, just with a key modification.

“Twelve and a half foot off the dirt this time,” he said. We’re fine.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2015 at 10:01 AM with the headline "As residents grapple with Waccamaw River’s flooding, many remember similar struggles with Hurricane Floyd."