COLUMBIA,
S.C. (AP) - South Carolina is better prepared for a hurricane
than it was five years ago, emergency officials say, but that
doesn't keep new problems from cropping up.
This year's headache, for instance, is National Guard
deployments overseas that took much of the equipment used
during emergencies with them.
Otherwise, Gov. Mark Sanford got mostly good news Tuesday
during a meeting with law enforcement officials, emergency
workers and social service agencies about the state's ability
to respond to a storm like Hurricane Alex that stalled off the
coast this past weekend before heading up to North Carolina
and out to sea.
"It is as well tested as one can test it without going
through a storm," Sanford said of the state's plan.
Army National Guard Col. Dale Ellenburg said his units have
enough troops to help out if a hurricane strikes South
Carolina's coast. About 2,800 of the state's 6,700 National
Guard troops have been deployed around the world in response
to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What is lacking, Ellenburg said, is equipment like
generators, used to run water treatment and sewage plants when
the power goes out, and bulldozers and dump trucks to help get
rid of debris.
But, officials said, the state has agreements with private
companies to provide similar equipment and other states often
offer help in an emergency.
Troopers and transportation officials said Tuesday that
practice runs at reversing lanes on major coastal highways
have gone well.
Those plans came in response to massive traffic jams five
years ago when people leaving the coast for Hurricane Floyd
turned Interstate 26 between Charleston to Columbia into a
parking lot and a two-hour trip into a nightmare of 15 hours
or more.
Then-Gov. Jim Hodges took much of the blame and Sanford
made the evacuation an issue in the 2002 gubernatorial
campaign.
Since then, transportation officials have created plans to
reverse the lanes of major coastal highways in Hilton Head
Island, Beaufort, Charleston and Myrtle Beach so residents can
have three or four lanes heading out during a mandatory
evacuation.
Troopers said tests over the past few years have been
successful, but they worry people will delay evacuating until
the lanes are reversed. "No matter how many lanes you open up,
there can't be seamless travel," Sanford said.
Public Safety Department director James Schweitzer said he
would like 20 hours' notice of a mandatory evacuation to get
the 1,500 state troopers, transportation workers and others in
place to do lane reversals.
That means the governor would have to put plans in motion
some 36 hours before landfall, giving a storm lots of time to
change direction and make the moves unnecessary. Sanford said
that kind of time may not be possible.
State Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart said he
is concerned with after the storm when hundreds of officers
will be needed to help protect heavily damaged areas from
looters and from property owners who want to get back to their
homes.
After Hurricane Hugo hit Charleston and much of the rest of
the coast in 1989, Stewart said people tried anything to get
back to their homes, even though power lines were down, gas
lines were severed and some homes could be rocked with just a
touch of the hand.
"More people were injured with Hugo after the storm than
during the storm," Stewart said.
