Over 130 years later, a set of tracks runs on either side of a neighborhood and municipal buildings in low-lying south Dillon.

These two tracks, once a primary economic driver for the town, now serve as levees that trap water between them during floods, creating what many residents call a fish bowl. During Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence last year, Dillon County’s emergency operations center was in this fish bowl.

An emergency operations center, or EOC, is activated during a disaster to serve as a central base for local officials to respond immediately and effectively to community needs.

“We had to go to manually operating the EOC, and that made the operation devastating,” said Moses Heyward, the Dillon County Emergency Management director, “That needs to change, because when you lose your brain of the EOC in radio communication, you have a problem.”

During Hurricane Florence, floodwaters from the Little Pee Dee River to the north and the Maple Swamp to the south flooded and shut down the Dillon County EOC along with the 911 call center, requiring emergency calls to be rerouted nearly 30 miles away to Florence, South Carolina. 

The calls would then be sent back to Dillon emergency responders through manual radios, making response time longer.

“It was like flying on a jet in a helicopter,” Heyward said.

Delayed response lasted for five days until a mobile 911 call center was installed in Dillon County.

Heyward has searched for grants to rebuild a new EOC on higher ground, but he has not found any grants that fund a project of that nature.

“They need to make a special provision to get Dillon County into a new EOC building relocated on higher ground,” Heyward said. “Without an EOC, 911 system, you are asking to get somebody hurt very bad if not possibly having casualties.”

Locally, funds to relocate the EOC are limited. The median household income in Dillon County is $30,866, and the poverty rate is nearly 30%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“You’re on a fixed income of what you’ve got in the tax base,” said Jarett Taylor, the town administrator in Latta, South Carolina. “You can’t really increase your taxes to a point where you can ever overcome something like this.”

South Dillon was not the only area of the town that flooded. The flooding was widespread in the city and the county, turning two other towns, Lake View and Latta, into islands.

“Downtown Dillon, every area and every storefront, was flooded in about three feet of water,” said Kenneth Smith, chairman of the Dillon County Long Term Recovery Group. “The whole downtown. It was like nothing you never seen.”

Flooding on the Little Pee Dee River in Dillon is a relatively modern phenomenon. The closest gauge for the river in nearby Horry County measured the crest at a record 17 feet during Matthew and Florence. The highest amount before Matthew was 16 feet in 1928. The river’s minimum flood stage is at 9 feet, according to the National Weather Service.

“I never expected flooding in Dillon County … but after 2016 and after 2018, we see that we can definitely have that happen in our area,” said Thesdia Bethea, assistant director at Dillon County Emergency Management.

Local funds are insufficient for Dillon County Emergency Management to respond to this recent onslaught of flooding, Heyward said.

“After a disaster … we pretty much have to request resources from the state, and it will make it so much easier for recovery efforts if we already have those resources in place,” Bethea said.

Officials in Dillon County don’t expect the flooding to stop any time soon.

“We’ve had two in the last three years. I don’t think it’s going to be a ‘if it ever happens again.’ It’s going to be ‘whenever it happens again,’” Taylor said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens this year.”

For Heyward, the priority is relocating Dillon County’s EOC to higher ground, so local officials can respond more effectively to future flooding.

“The bottom line,” he said. “They’ve got to get this EOC moved.”

Ben Sessoms

Ben Sessoms is a recent graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where he double majored in journalism and communication studies. During his time at Appalachian State, Sessoms was the news editor of the student newspaper, The Appalachian, where he covered issues ranging from free speech restrictions on campus to student voting rights. Sessoms also interned at the local Boone newspaper, the Watauga Democrat. You can find his work here.

bensessoms.com

The post The fish bowl in Dillon, S.C. appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

“It was bedlam,” recalled Elfin Forest resident Nancy Reed. “Absolute bedlam.”

After being trapped in traffic during the 2014 Cocos Fire, Reed is among many looking to avoid previous evacuation woes. Reed, who scrambled to load her animals and connect her trailer to her car, was unable to evacuate due to traffic along the road. Other residents were unable to make multiple trips back to rescue all of their animals after mandatory evacuations began. 

Reed owns five horses, two dogs and two cats. She credits Jazzi, her 18-year-old competitive riding horse, with helping her through her husband’s death in 2006. 

“There is no way in hell I am leaving her with a fire,” she said. “No way in hell. You wouldn’t do that with your child. You would do whatever you had to do if it was your child.”

Wendy Said, a horse trainer in Harmony Grove, loaded her donkey and two horses in her 40-foot trailer the evening before the fire closed in. She waited two hours to pull out of her driveway and onto Country Club Road, a dead-end passageway that feeds onto the main road. 

“It’s a mess every single time,” Said lamented. “I’ve lived here for 33 years; it gets worse every time.”

Reed and Said are among two neighbors who conducted a census of horses in Elfin Forest Harmony Grove. Coordinating with local and state officials, Reed is working on plans for staging areas when the next disaster strikes. 

“We’ve got to do something better because you cannot let family members perish,” Reed said.

Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove are home to more than 500 horses, according to the neighborhood census, which also includes chickens, goats, and alpacas. When fires strike, residents are at the mercy of the unpredictable nature of the burn — as well as crowded traffic conditions that are exacerbated by cattle trailers and multiple trips required to evacuate pets. 

Residents fear future neighborhood developments may further complicate evacuation. The town council has sued San Diego County over two proposed developments — Valiano and Harmony Grove Village South — that, combined, would add more than 700 homes to the area. Council Chairman JP Theberge said the developments’ approvals violate a “good-faith promise” by the county that it would not approve more housing in the area.

Both of them surround Harmony Grove Village, a 700-home development approved in 2007. The site is estimated to be completed in 2020, according to the company website. Theberge said the new residents have become a part of the community; however, he’s unsure how a full neighborhood will factor into evacuation. 

“We’re still not clear on what’s going to happen when the next fire comes and we have 750 homes already built,” Theberge said. 

Said, whose property is near the site for Valiano, describes the proposed development a “tomb.”

“How would we, in the best case scenario, get our horse trailers onto Country Club Drive?” she asked. 

Said and Reed, both longtime residents of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, attribute the success of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, as well as the support they’ve received on forming protocol, to the shared culture of autonomy and ownership.

“This is a resilient community,” Reed said. “People take care of one another. They care about one another.”

Kailey Broussard

Kailey Broussard is a master’s student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. As an undergraduate, Broussard reported on historic flooding in south Louisiana, as well as fraternity hazing at her alma mater, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her work has won regional recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Southeast Journalism Conference. She also served in various reporting and editing positions at the university’s student publication, The Vermilion. Her previous work can be found in The Advocate, The Current and The Independent. View her work on her website here.

kaileybroussard.com

The post Rural San Diegans plan for next wildfire — and horse evacuation appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

Bounce houses, barbecues and face painting are recurring trademarks at the annual White Mountains Community Firewise Block Party. But this year included a new attraction, presentations from the Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire (CPAW) program. 

The program is funded by the U.S. Forest Service and other private foundations to work with wildfire-vulnerable community and provide fire safety training, land use planning, hazard assessments and wildfire risk trend research to make the community fire adapted. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group defines that as “a human community consisting of informed and prepared citizens collaboratively planning and taking action to safely coexist with wildland fire.”

Since its establishment in 2015, CPAW has partnered with 30 communities in 13 states across the country to make them fire adapted. 

The program received 27 grant applications from seven different states this year and accepted four. The 2019 communities are Pinetop-Lakeside, Gunnison County, Colorado, Redding, California and Mariposa County, California.

Kelly Johnston, forestry and fire behavior expert and the lead of the CPAW Pinetop-Lakeside project said the program’s decision to work with the community was a “no-brainer” because of the area’s susceptibility to wildfires and the willingness of officials to work together.

In the last two decades, Pinetop-Lakeside has been forced to evacuate twice by two historic Arizona wildfires — the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire and the 2011 Wallow Fire, which collectively burned more than 998,000 acres.

“I’m very excited to have CPAW working with us because they not only save lives and structures, but they make the jobs of our firefighters much safer. It’s a win-win for everyone,” said Jim Morgan, fire chief of the Pinetop Fire Department, who led to the application for the grant. “If we can survive wildfires, we can have a home to go home to and forests to enjoy.”

To make learning about wildfire safety both fun and consistent, the Pinetop Fire Department co-hosted the annual Firewise Block Party for the fifth time, Morgan sees this as a resource to the people.

“If we can get an early start to fire safety education, we can get a multigenerational change to our culture,” Morgan said. “If we start teaching kids to be fire safe it becomes embedded into them. It becomes a part of them for their whole lives.”

On the Friday before the party, the CPAW team hosted a wildfire training day. 

“We are really focused on empowering people to move forward so they can carry on in the long term to reduce wildfire risk through land planning,” Johnston said. “These meetings and sessions are so important because we are essentially passing them the torch.”

The day after the training, Johnston joined other presentations during the party on topics such as homeowner fire safety, defensible space, fire wise landscaping and evacuation preparedness.

Residents of Pinetop-Lakeside join more than 832,000 Arizonians who live in intermixed communities, meaning housing and wildland vegetation intermingle, according to the Department of Agriculture’s 2010 Wildland Urban Interface report. Data shows close to 40 million people across the country live in similarly forested communities.

Communities nestled in the forest are more vulnerable to wildfires. Across all the states, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have the largest percentage of their population living in forested communities, according to the report.

The approximately 4,300-person town of Pinetop-Lakeside is located in the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the world. According to the National Park Service, despite the tree itself being fire resistant, forests filled with Ponderosa pine are susceptible to wildfires because of the flammable foliage that surrounds the trees.

“We have not done the thinning that needs to occur to make that land manageable,” Morgan said. “That’s one of the things we are trying to educate our community on.”

The process to make Pinetop-Lakeside fire adapted began in April when CPAW made their first visit to the community. Johnston and other members of his team met with forestry experts, homeowners and the fire department.

“The real test to know whether or not the community is adapted is how well it fares if a wildfire goes through the community … The answer to that we won’t know until we respond to a significant wildfire and evaluate how we did,” Morgan said. “Being fire adapted can take many years and a community can never reach a fully adapted status because there is a dynamic relationship with the environment.”

The wildfire threat has been ever-present this year. According to data from the National Interagency Fire Center, more Arizonan land has been burned by wildfires in the first six months of 2019 than in all of 2018.

Johnston and other members of the CPAW team will present their research and recommendations during their final trip to Pinetop-Lakeside that is being planned sometime between October and December.

CPAW has been operating on yearly budget and within the next few months, will know if the USFS will continue its approximately $1 million funding of the  program. If granted, applications from wildfire-vulnerable communities will be opened in August.

Anton L. Delgado

Anton L. Delgado is a senior at Elon University where he studies journalism and international and global studies. At Elon, he serves as the managing editor of the school newspaper and as a multimedia journalist for Elon News Network. Delgado spent spring 2019 in Morocco as a news correspondent for Morocco World News. He has previously worked for Save the Children Jordan and Town&Country Philippines. Delgado dreams of working as an investigative journalist in conflict zones. View Delgado’s work here.

www.antondelgado.com

The post Wildfire-vulnerable communities adapt to ever-present threat appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.