Riverbank residents ride out flooding

Marooned in her mobile home, Lenore Letellier fixates on the news reports. She constantly looks out her window at the swamp that used to be her yard. And she wonders just how high the Waccamaw River will rise.

“It’s up to the bottom step on my porch,” she said. “It’s coming in the back. I have no front yard. You can’t even describe it. It’s really terrifying. ... You don’t even know what to do. Do you evacuate? Do you stay? We have animals and we didn’t want to leave them. It’s just, it’s devastating.”

Letellier is among the dozens of homeowners living near the Waccamaw River who opted to ride out the flood. Meteorologists don’t expect the river to rise much higher, if at all. But to residents without raised homes, even a small change could worsen an already tense situation.

“You’re helpless,” said Letellier, whose Embassy Lane home sits near Lee’s Landing off S.C. 90. “It’s very scary. ... There is no land at all.”

Agents from the state Department of Natural Resources have been visiting river area homes by boat this week, taking note of how many people are in each dwelling and asking residents if they’d like to leave.

“We’re not making them get out,” said DNR First Sgt. Nate Hutson. “If they want a way to evacuate, we’re helping them.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, DNR officials had transported 48 people to or from their homes. Some of those who evacuated needed to return to retrieve medication. Others just needed to get away from their islands in the Waccamaw.

For those who chose to stick it out, DNR agents counted the number of people in each residence. Officials were still performing checks late Thursday afternoon, but so far they had accounted for 90 people who chose to stay.

Hutson noted that the system is imperfect because some people leave their homes by boat and work during the day, then return in the evening. He also said many of those who don’t evacuate are longtime residents who expect to see an occasional flood.

“These folks are experts,” he said. “They’re used to this.”

Each day this week, 24-year-old Keegan Wroten has loaded up his brothers in their small boat and taken them to higher ground so they could get to work.

He’s been barefoot most of the week and has been unfazed sleeping in the house his family has owned for 15 years.

“Everybody on the river’s willing to take care of you, for sure,” he said. “They might be a little reckless, but they’ll take care of you.”

Wroten chose to stay surrounded by water because he didn’t want looters preying on his property.

“To make sure somebody’s watching, make sure we don’t get robbed,” he said. “Houses get robbed during floods. It’s easy pickings. You knock on the door and ask for sugar and if they don’t answer then you go and you help yourself.”

Armed with a couple of 12 gauge shotguns and a handful of other firearms, Wroten wasn’t worried about unwanted visitors.

“That’s not going to happen at my house,” he said.

He also said the police presence on the water has been strong throughout the week, and that’s comforting. Overall, he said, the flood hasn’t been terrible. He’s taken a few days off, watched some movies and helped get neighbors to their homes if they needed a ride.

“A lot of chillin,’” he said. “A lot of drinkin’ at night.”

Carlos Santamaria visited his home Thursday for the first time since he evacuated. The 35-year-old concrete worker lives on Lee’s Landing Circle and his home sits high off the ground.

His land flooded a few years ago, but in the five years he’s been there the water’s never been so high.

“The last time it was only like two or three feet,” he said. “I’ve never seen this.”

Some of his neighbors have lived on the river for years and warned him about the possibility of flooding.

“They told us that can happen,” he said. “But I never think about it.”

Despite the concerns about the river rising, forecasters don’t expect the Waccamaw to get much higher.

“We have rain showers in the forecast from Friday night through Sunday,” said Joe Miketta, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “But we’re thinking right now that the amount of rainfall that we get will most likely just slow the recession of the river rather than cause any increase in water levels that we’re already experiencing.”

Miketta, however, did caution residents to monitor the latest weather information.

“Particularly at vulnerable times like this,” he said. “Everything is really wet right now, and it won’t take a lot of rain for things to change and go back up.”

Once the river crests, he said, it could took take a week or more for water to drop below flood stage.

Letellier isn’t sure she can wait much longer. On Thursday afternoon, she was debating whether to continue to stay at home or evacuate. The main reason she hadn’t left, she said, is that her pets don’t like staying in boarding facilities and she wanted to keep them with her.

As she loaded yellow Dollar General bags of groceries and cat food into a jon boat, she pointed out that even if the river has reached its peak, her property won’t drain overnight.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to go away anytime soon,” she said. “We haven’t lost anything yet and we pray to God we don’t.”

This story was originally published October 8, 2015 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Riverbank residents ride out flooding."