Devastation in the heart of agricultural South Carolina

Nathaniel Cary, ncary@greenvillenews.com
Erik Martin of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources rides down Fork Retch Court in Mullins which has flooded since Hurricane Matthew hit the coast. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

Anita Hunt sat and stared into the distance at the water that glistened as it spilled across the highway that leads to her home. Or at least what was her home. She didn’t know anymore. She hadn’t seen it yet and probably wouldn’t for days to come. She hoped it was still there.

Her home was the place where two families became one, where she and her husband built a life in the tiny rural town of Nichols, South Carolina, for their six children, ages 6-16 – a Brady Bunch blended family from different marriages. It’d been home for 13 years and it had been hard to leave even as the wind swirled and rain pelted from Hurricane Matthew late on a Saturday night – October 8th – as thigh-deep water pooled in the yard, rising rapidly, and made it impossible to grab even their most-valuable keepsakes.

So Hunt had grabbed Gloria, their Chihuahua, waded to the car and left.  

That was the last time she’d seen home. And now she sat and watched from the driver’s seat of her SUV as the water flowed slowly and silently across the road in front of her, through the trees beside her and into the fields next to her, forming a peninsula that kept the townspeople away from their town.

Her husband, Roy, left by boat two hours ago to check on the house and hadn’t yet returned. She needn't await word from him. The mayor of Nichols had already broken the news their house was destroyed.

“We just have to start over.”

Just as the raging flood waters have cut Nichols' 358 residents off from their town, people in the Pee Dee feel cut off from the rest of the state – largely forgotten as Palmetto State residents have moved on from Hurricane Matthew believing South Carolina dodged a bullet.

Hunt and a half-dozen other residents of Nichols and the nearby riverside community of Fork Retch just stared – at the water, at the highway, at the helicopters overhead. Some made small talk with neighbors. All waited for the water to recede, a wait that would last several more days.

Belle Ward stands at the end of Fork Retch Court in Mullins on Thursday. The street where she and her husband Morris have their home flooded since Hurricane Matthew hit the coast. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

What they would see if they could glimpse across the river and around the bend and up and down the streets would be a town completely submerged.  

They worry the public assistance and donations of time or resources from big-hearted South Carolinians won’t materialize this time like it did last October when floods devastated the Columbia area.

People don’t realize just how bad it’s gotten, some said, even as authorities on Friday announced the death of a fifth person, a man from Nichols who drowned in his living room.

In the Pee Dee, the hurricane toppled trees that blocked roads and cut power for days. Life stopped and hasn’t restarted for hundreds, especially those who live in small riverside communities like Nichols, Fork Retch and Brittons Neck in the heart of rural agricultural South Carolina.

When Hurricane Matthew swept through, it dumped 10-12 inches of rain on surrounding communities and even more on the towns of Mullins and Marion to the west of Nichols and Fork Retch.

Nichols location, at the fork where the tines of the Little Pee Dee and Lumber rivers intersect, created a funnel for all of that storm water.

Residents fled the town to get through low-lying roads before they became impassable. Belongings left behind swept downstream and collected against trees or in thickets. Coolers and gas cans and mattresses and small boats and picnic tables and children’s toys floated away downstream as the water rose higher, first to the windowsills and eventually to the tops of windows, submerging car ports and golf carts and sedans and horse trailers beneath the water line.

For many, this was the only place they’d ever known. Now they waited to see if it would look like anything they knew.

“Those are a lot of people that didn’t have much to start with that were born and raised in that area and that’s all they’ve ever known,” said Gov. Nikki Haley, who toured Nichols in a high-water vehicle on Friday and visited residents in a shelter in nearby Mullins.

Erik Martin of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources rides down Fork Retch Court in Mullins which has flooded since Hurricane Matthew hit the coast. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

 “I can’t even rebuild."

Gary Gasque’s grandfather built his house along the Little Pee Dee River in 1960 when Gasque was three years old. Gasque had experienced the river’s flooding before. It had risen past 12 feet in 1993 and again in 1998 and 1999. Anything over 11 feet is considered major flood stage.  

Gasque, a self-employed carpenter, thought he was okay. He put his tools on racks beneath the house and went to bed. When he woke up Sunday morning, the water was at his top step.

The river would crest Tuesday at 17.1 feet, its highest point on record.

His small riverside community of Fork Retch had completely flooded. Dozens of vehicles were left abandoned on the side of the road, their occupants having sought other ways to get out as the road flooded.

“I threw what I could put in a small strip boat and struggled to make it to the road,” Gasque said. “I got out of the boat and pulled the boat down the road.”

By Thursday, two days after the river crested and five days after Matthew swept through, nearly every home along the river sat in water six to eight feet deep. It was eerily silent and calm as the sun bore down through the trees on a watery ghost town. Water stood near the top of street signs. A tree had fallen lengthwise across one home. Power lines sank in the water, held down by felled trees.  Flowerpots and bird feeders hung beneath front porches just inches above water that covered rocking chairs below.

Cars sat in their driveways covered to the top of the doors in water. Erik Martin of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources navigated his boat between houses searching for looters or people and animals in distress. The day before, SCDNR teams had made a number of rescues of residents who’d boated in and got stuck. They’d rescued a horse trapped to its neck in water and found seven goats, which he threw into a boat and tied alongside his for a ride to dry ground.

Standing there watching the current of brown water slowly passing over the road that leads to his house, the realization slowly began to sink in for Gasque. “I can’t even rebuild," he said. "I don’t have any tools.”

Like every other resident of Fork Retch and Nichols, he could only wait.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said “The unknown is bad but knowing might be worse.”

Cars and homes on Fork Retch Court in Mullins remained flooded over on Thursday after Hurricane Matthew hit the coast. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

Struggle in the Pee Dee

It could be a week before Fork Retch and Nichols residents can return on solid ground. They are at the mercy of the river, left grasping at a life that’s spinning out of control.

It’s a microcosm of life in the Pee Dee itself, a proud agricultural region that’s spiraled downward for 20-plus years.

The historic tobacco exchanges sat empty, their roofs rusting and wooden slat walls weathered. Big textile industry had abandoned the region, though pockets of cotton fields still dot the landscape, the leafy plants beginning to brown and white cotton bolls ready for plucking.

Railroad tracks, abandoned for years, run through Nichols and parts of Marion County. They’d been purchased recently with a plan to fix the tracks and reopen for a new industrial age as the county’s economic development teams marketed tracts for sale.

As most retail trade sought the more valuable communities an hour away in Myrtle Beach or a half-hour's drive to Florence, the county’s 33,000 residents struggled along, making due with a familiar life surrounded by resource-rich land.

“We’ve lost a lot of jobs,” said Wayne George, one of the county’s two state representatives. “Typical of rural South Carolina, we’ve lost population, about 10 percent over the last 15 years.”

Nichols population has dropped in the town itself from about 400 in the 2000 census to 358 in the 2015 survey. The aging downtown streets are filled with shuttered businesses and storage buildings while moderate traditional brick or wooden homes or trailers line its streets.

Residents who call Nichols home clung to the town, living among its sandy soil and pine trees for decades, shopping at Nichols Farm Supply for seeds or fertilizer and for gas or a bite to eat at Sunny Mart.  

Erik Martin of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources rides down Fork Retch Court in Mullins which has flooded since Hurricane Matthew hit the coast. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

Fork Retch, just outside town, was a bright spot. Over the last 20 years outsiders arrived to buy up many of the river houses and remodel them. It’d turned into the most sought-after community in the county, with a boat landing and docks on the banks of the river.

Now, it’s a disaster, said Bobby Page, a longtime resident who felt fortunate to have a two-story home and flood insurance he’d purchased after some minor flooding in 1999.

“I would be willing to say that 95 percent of people between here and Nichols do not have flood insurance,” Page said. “And the reason I say that is because the only ones that do have flood insurance that I know of right now are the ones that have been forced to buy it because they have a mortgage.”

Page, speaking for many in the community, said they don’t know where to start. Most have lost everything. Homeowners insurance would cover little more than food that had spoiled, and Page said it feels like the state has already moved on, believing it had escaped the worst of Hurricane Matthew.

“But this is our 1,000-year flood,” he said. “People have lost everything. What they need is money to buy a new saw.”

Page said he’ll rebuild – higher and better.

“The next time I build a house down here, you’re going to nickname it the Eagle’s Nest,” he said.

Lorelei Schipke of Loris rescues a horse trapped in flood waters for the Marion County Animal Shelter off of Bay Road in Brittons Neck on Thursday. Hurricane Matthew has caused flooding in the Pee Dee region. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

"We get lost back there."

Further downstream in the Brittons Neck community along U.S. 378 that leads to Myrtle Beach, the Larrimore clan camped out in a truck bed and waited for family members who’d taken jet skis and a boat to find what they could in a flooded single-wide trailer.

They’d gone at it alone, said John Boothroyd. He hadn’t so much as seen a state or local official.

“We’re kind of at the edge of the county and we get lost back there,” Boothroyd said.

He’d bought the trailer with his fiancée, Angie Larrimore, three years ago and had time to get their vehicles and some belongings out, but the water rose too quickly to get everything else.

“I put everything on higher shelves and hope and pray it don’t get no higher,” he said. “We’ve never seen no water like this.”

Andy Larrinore, Angie’s father, drove up in his truck. He’d been at his house just down the street, trying to gather chickens – “what was left of them” – from his yard.

Last October, when historic floods swept through, the water had barely left the river bank nearby, so he didn’t worry when told to expect floodwaters again following Matthew.

Now his home, his mother’s home and two rentals are ruined and has left him trying to figure out what to do next, he said, as he took off his visor, wiped sweat from his brow and scratched his head.

“Insurance ain’t worth the damn paper it’s written on,” he said. “That is a joke.”

He’d lived on the side road near U.S. 378 his entire life. He figures he’s going to rebuild it all himself.

“They say go to FEMA, but I don’t know nothing about FEMA,” he said. “I mean, I’ve heard of it but I don’t know how to do it.”

Jason Larrimore, far left, John Boothroyd, Holden Burroughs and George Grainger, right, load items recovered from their families' Brittons Neck homes from a boat to a truck since Hurricane Matthew caused flooding in the Pee Dee region. Thursday, October 13, 2016.

Another truck sped up, another relative ready to help. Jason Larrimore backed the truck down to a pontoon boat laden with belongings. They began to load Boothroyd’s life’s collection into the truckbed. Some model cars, a plastic bag of Christmas wrapping paper, a few small shelves, a popcorn machine.

Jason Larrimore grabbed a framed photo.

“Pictures of me when I was little,” he said as a matter of fact.

Next, a guitar.

“Could play some soul,” he said as he strummed a chord.

Angel Watts sat in another truck bed and watched for the next pontoon to arrive. She smoked a cigarette, put her feet up on a boat trailer and waited. The sun began to sink toward the horizon, the water would rise higher overnight, they’d been told.

There wasn’t much more to do now. They’d called the Red Cross, who’d offered shelter, but chose to move in with family instead. The insurance agent hadn’t helped a lick. They’d try that FEMA group later. Maybe call the county office for direction. They’d seen the response elsewhere in South Carolina the year before and wondered if it would come for them too.

Either way, it was going to be a slog in the days ahead, and they were already tired.

The single wide was already ruined. Its front porch was floating, its floors warped and its walls likely damaged beyond repair. It had weathered the hurricane but couldn’t survive the flood.

“Really, Boothroyd said, “it’s easier to start over.”

To donate:

Monetary donations can be given through onescfund.org.

For other ways to donate, visit S.C. Emergency Management Division website

People gather along a flooded Bay Road in Brittons Neck on Thursday. Hurricane Matthew has caused flooding in the Pee Dee region. Thursday, October 13, 2016.