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Article published Aug 4, 2004
Sanford: State better prepared for a hurricane

JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press

COLUMBIA -- 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 I-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.