Contrary to initial predictions, Hurricane Charley went off its charted course just enough Saturday to spare the Pee Dee any real storm damage.

“Basically, the storm tracked further to the east than initially expected,” Florence County Emergency Preparedness Manager Dusty Owens said. “The good news is that it did, because if it had come in as forecasted, the stuff that’s going on down at the coast would be going on in our area.”

Cloudy skies and light wind was all that Florence got, and by early afternoon the sun was back out.

Owens said there was no damage in Florence County, but there were some sporadic power outages in Pamplico and Johnsonville caused by downed trees. Fortunately, forecasted flooding in lower Florence County didn’t come to fruition either.

“Actually, we’ve had very little rain,” Owens said. “Johnsonville has gotten three-fourths of an inch of rain, which is nothing compared to what we were expecting.”

Though not nearly as harsh as expected, conditions were a little rough in lower Florence County and areas of Williamsburg County.

With Hurricane Charley churning just to the east Saturday morning, skies in the Hemingway-Johnsonville area grew dark, the wind picked up and rain began to pour.

As the storm moved up the coast, a trash can blew down Main Street in Hemingway and small limbs and debris blown from the branches of trees accumulated on parts of S.C. 41/51 in Johnsonville.

“We had been working around the clock,” said Johnsonville Police Chief Ron Douglas. The police department was preparing for Johnsonville’s Founder’s Day Festival. But Douglas said attention to the hurricane-related weather became a priority.

“We had traffic lights out,” caused by limbs on power lines, Douglas said. The interruption in electric service also set off some burglar alarms in town. Douglas said he saw the radio tower at the Johnsonville Fire Department fall because of wind gusts.

Hemingway Police Chief Sandy Thompson said as he saw limbs scattered around while on patrol during the storm. There was a minor automobile accident on S.C. 261, but it was not clear how much of a factor the weather played in it.

Thompson said much of Hemingway lost power for several hours.

However, the chief said he thought the town fared pretty well considering the ferocity of the wind gusts spawned by the hurricane.

“I think we were very fortunate,” Thompson said. “It could have been much worse.”

The storm did manage to deal a blow to the Founder’s Day Festival, but even inclement weather wasn’t enough to stop the festival’s Bar-B-Que Chicken Cook-Off and cake-baking contest. Some of the entertainment showed for the event, but the vendors scheduled to show did not come.

Johnsonville’s Louie Tyler, who took first place in the chicken cook-off with Thomas Gaster, said he moved his cooker from under a tree as he cooked through the storm.

“We had gotten this far, and I thought we had a chance to win,” Tyler said with a big smile.

“I guess you can say I survived the first annual barbecue chicken cook-off.”

Other areas of the Pee Dee fared just as well despite Charley’s looming presence.

Despite the high winds and heavy rain in neighboring Horry County, conditions in Marion County remained rainy but relatively calm for the most part, Emergency Preparedness Director Linda Grice said.

Mullins and Britton’s Neck experienced some high winds, but the gusts caused no substantial damage.

“We’ve had some isolated incidents of falling trees and tree limbs falling on power lines, but that’s about it,” Grice said.

Marion County Chief Deputy Sheriff Allan Rogers said Mullins High School, one of four shelters open Saturday in Marion County, lost power for a brief time but it was restored quickly.

As of 3 p.m. Saturday, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative had restored all power outages caused by Hurricane Charley, which occurred in Marion County.

No other areas of the cooperative’s service territory were affected.

Outages began just before 11:30 a.m. and continued until 2 p.m.

The cooperative experienced about 700 outages. However, no more than 400 services were without power at any one time, with most outages being scattered along the Horry County border and lower Marion County.

Progress Energy said Saturday that they only had about 800 customers without power mostly in the Kingstree area and expected their power to be restored by early Saturday evening.

In Dillon County, emergency workers prepared for the worst but were expecting much better than they’d initially anticipated. “Things have been pretty calm,” Dillon County Emergency Preparedness Director Robert Abson Jr. said.

“I spoke with the National Weather Service this morning and they said we probably wouldn’t get wind gusts of any more than 35 miles per hour and between three and six inches of rain, closer to three than six,” he said.

“So it really isn’t nearly as bad as they were saying it was going to be. It doesn’t look like we’re going to have much of a problem at all.”

- The (Hemingway) Weekly News and Observer Editor Terry Ward contributed to this story.

Let us know what you think of this story | Send us a letter to the editor