Chiropractic Care in Summerville, SC

The 2022 hurricane season has officially started and for the next five months, those along the Atlantic coast will be paying close attention to any activity that may bubble up.

About 20 named storms are predicted, but there are several variables that play a role on how severe a storm will be and where it will go.

The latest major storm to hit the Lowcountry was Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016. At one point it strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane. It tracked just off the east coast of Florida and Georgia while weakening to a Category 1 storm before making landfall near McClellanville with winds near 85 mph.

According to the National Weather Service, the storm produced hurricane force wind gusts along the entire coast, coastal flooding from high storm tides and 6 to 12 inches of widespread rainfall. The rain led to significant freshwater flooding inland.

“The official NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) seasonal outlook for the Atlantic Basin for 2022 calls for 14 to 21 named storms, so anything tropical storm or greater,” said Bob Bright from the National Weather Service in Charleston. “Six to ten of those will be strong enough to be classified as a hurricane. Three to six of those could be major hurricanes, which is a Category 3 or better.”

And considering recent numbers, the predictions have been pretty close.

“From what I’ve seen recently, the predictions are pretty good. They’ve been calling for above normal seasons for a while and we have seen above normal activity, so they’ve been pretty good lately,” said Bright.

Local preparations

That doesn’t mean the storms will be right off the South Carolina coast. The Atlantic Basin consists of the Southwest Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico — that’s a lot of water. Still, state and local officials have urged residents to prepare.

On June 4, the Dorchester County Emergency Management Department held its 9th Hurricane Preparedness Expo. The event was at the newly opened Ashley River Park in Summerville.

The public was invited to learn about hurricane preparedness from local public safety and nonprofit organizations.

“With another hurricane season upon us, now is the time for everyone to have a plan for what to do during a storm,” said Tom McNeal, the county EMD director. “If you are new to the area, seek out hurricane preparedness information on our Dorchester County Emergency Management website.

The site gives information about evacuation routes, flood zones, how to prepare if you have pets, and a family disaster plan template to help county residents prep in case they have to hunker down or evacuate for storms.

“If you’ve been here a long time, it is time (to) check your past plans and preparedness efforts to make sure they still work for you and your family,” McNeal said. “Remember, it only takes one storm to have a catastrophic impact our community.”

Berkeley County has published its inaugural Hurricane Guide for the 2022 Storm Season. Available in both English and Spanish, the guide was created by the county’s emergency management department and public information office.

Berkeley County is one of the fastest growing counties in South Carolina; and with the start of the Atlantic Hurricane season, the county wanted to make sure residents are informed.

“The biggest change for us this year is that we are working a little bit more with our public interface,” said Ben Almquist, director of Emergency Management in Berkeley County. “We put out a county specific hurricane guide this year and we are doing more public awareness, public education.”

The guide specifically includes information on hurricane risks, a checklist for building a disaster supplies kit, details on local evacuation routes, a list of important contacts and more. It can be accessed via the homepage of the county website at berkeleycountysc.gov.

For those like Almquist, getting the public to pay attention early and often is sometimes the hardest part when a storm is approaching. Often, for days, a storm may be heading this way only to make a sudden turn and miss the area. Public complacency could be dangerous.

“We try to preach preparedness without panic,” Almquist told The Independent. “We always try to take a measured approach when we have a storm system that is threatening the county. We are not going too far overboard with our public recommendations, but we are going to make sure we are prepared to whatever is necessary.”

On June 4, the Dorchester County Emergency Management Department held its ninth Hurricane Preparedness Expo. The event was at the Ashley River Park in Summerville.

The public was invited to learn about hurricane preparedness from local public safety and non-profit organizations.

“With another Hurricane Season upon us, now is the time for everyone to have a plan for what to do during a storm. If you are new to the area, seek out hurricane preparedness information on our Dorchester County Emergency Management webs site,” said EMD Director Tom McNeal.

“If you’ve been here a long time, it is time check your past plans and preparedness efforts to make sure they still work for you and your family. Remember, it only takes one storm to have a catastrophic impact our community,” he said.

SUMMERVILLE — Saying its facility was too small from the moment it opened, Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital is seeking to more than double its size.

Roper has the required state license to expand from 50 to 100 beds and add more than 124,000 square feet to its current 116,000-square-foot hospital at 100 Callen Blvd. It will come with a hefty price tag of more than $193 million.

Trident Health also is seeking state permission, known as a Certificate of Need, to add 50 beds at its Summerville Medical Center at 295 Midland Parkway. The expansion would cost more than $62 million. That application is under review by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Construction on Roper’s expansion could start as early as November 2023, but its license can be contested by any of its competitors — which would likely lead to a delay. The cost estimate for the expansion took into account inflation and the dramatically rising cost of construction materials, said Chief Administrative Officer Patrick Bosse.

A similar appeal process kept Roper’s Summerville facility from opening for 11 years and is one reason it was too small when it finally began seeing patients in 2019, he said. Since 2010, Berkeley County’s population has grown 33 percent and Dorchester County by 19.6 percent, according to a Post and Courier analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

“Obviously the community changed dramatically in a decade,” Bosse said. “We knew that the facility was not built to really accommodate the pace of growth that this area had seen.”

For instance, the emergency room has 14 patient care bays and is designed to handle 40 to 60 patients a day, he said.

“We’re seeing well over 100 a day,” Bosse said, and maxed out at 214 in a single day. “We drastically need a larger ER to enable us to accommodate the volume that we’re seeing.”

The expansion would add 21 new patient bays to the ER to raise the total to 35. As with many facilities, the ER is the “front door of your hospital” because many admissions start there, Bosse said. Adding more beds would allow the hospital to expand a number of other services, from cardiac to orthopedic to general surgery, he said. The expansion also includes four new operating rooms, which would raise the total to eight.

“Really it’s looking at the community, looking at what is coming in through our ERs, looking at community growth and trying to keep people closer to home” for care, Bosse said.

In addition to its new bed request, Trident’s expansion efforts include three new operating rooms to open next year at its Summerville location, bringing its total to nine, and an Emergency Department expansion that includes a 10-bed pediatric emergency room, spokeswoman Kelly Bowen said. Plans also call for adding unfinished space on Summerville’s fifth floor that could be built out in the future as needs expand, she said.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC) - Two massive warehouses will soon be coming to Dorchester County after the council voted to go into an agreement with an industrial developer.

The council unanimously approved an agreement with developer Dalfen Industrial that will see the warehouses, totaling over half a million square feet, to be built near Summerville.

The 75-acre complex is located off Deming Way near Hodge Road, which is less than a mile from the Dorchester County Jail. The developer will spend just under $49 million dollars to build the complex, but it’s unclear how many jobs will be created.

John Truluck, the county’s director of economic development, says the development will only benefit county residents.

“It could be that they are able to get a job there,” Truluck said. “They may be driving 20 or 30 miles to work, and they may be able to find a job much closer to them, which even for the same pay would be a raise because they’re not paying for gas money, and that’s time they’re not having to spend on the roads.”

On their website, Dalfen Industrial said the site will be home to two distribution centers, and that some of their tenants include giants like Amazon, U-P-S and FedEx.

Truluck says the county bringing in development like this can help combat inflation, leaving taxes low for county residents.

“The government can raise more money by imposing higher taxes on the people that are already here, or they can bring in new businesses that pay those additional taxes, so they’ll get more services for the same money, in essence,” Truluck said.

Tommy Feagin has lived in Dorchester County since the 1960s.

He hopes the money coming in from these developments will help pay for more infrastructure projects in the future.

“We need a lot more infrastructure because things are stopped up terribly,” he said. “We have several, several, several bottlenecks. Dorchester Road, you can’t get up and down. I-26, you can’t get in and out of Charleston.”

County officials said they expect the two warehouses to be completed in about a year.

What ultimately goes in those warehouses depends on who the developer leases the buildings to.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCIV) — For many Summerville residents who live on South Main Street, they share this sentiment:

“If I didn't have to worry about every time it rained hard. I'd be happy,” Resident Todd Hibbard said.

The combination of recent rain in the Lowcountry and extra precipitation during hurricane season has caused flooding to become a major issue.

ABC News 4 recently covered the flooding issue in district one of Summerville near Warring Street. But the problem is just as prevalent in district two.

The director of public works in Summerville, Russ Cornette, said that this problem occurs because of the location of the town.

“We get these really high intensity, rainfall events in short periods of time that really overload overburdened the existing drainage system that we have all around town. And unfortunately, the system isn't large enough to handle the volume of water," Cornette said.

The neighborhood is located on a six foot decline from Main Street, which causes the flooding to rush downhill at high speeds and finding its way into backyards and surrounding properties.

The current is so strong that some residents joke that it may be faster to travel by boat.

“The current, if you had a canoe you could go from second to third and lickety split. It's just really bad,” Summerville resident Lisa Hammerlee said.

When large rainfalls come it leaves many residents to pick up the pieces and take it into their own hands to stop the flooding.

“I'm out here in the rain with a pitchfork trying to move pine straw to get the water to go somewhere,” Hubbard said.

Something that is an unpleasant feeling for many neighbors.

“I just feel upset. I just know. I know it's going to be harming all of my neighbor's property, it's going to be harming mine, I'm going to have a huge mess to clean up and and it's getting worse and worse and worse,” Hammerlee said.

But on top of the nuisance that the flooding is causing to these Summerville residents it is also doing damage to many of their properties.

One resident estimated it might take anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 to fix the damage to their property that this flooding has caused.

“I've had to have boards replaced on the bottom of my shed,” Summerville resident Cathy Lawter said.

“So the back of my car carports rotted out. I have tools in my shed that have been flooded out,” Hubbard said.

“It's just ruining property. And no one likes to see their property being ruined,” Hammerlee said.

All three of these neighbors said that they have been reaching out to the town for help since 2019 and have received little to no response until recently.

Another cause for frustration in this small town.

“We shouldn't get floods like that every time. We shouldn't have to clean up like that every time we shouldn't have to repair damage every time, you know when shouldn't have to try to get flood insurance. I mean, we just shouldn't have to do any of that,” Lawter said.

However, Cornette says that the town is aware of the problem and now working towards a solution.

This includes helping the upkeep of local drain pipes, adding more drain outlets and he said he would considering doing more if those methods do not work.

“The town is in process of several drainage projects and different stages of development.”

ABC News 4 also reached out to District Two council member in Summerville Terry Jenkins, who said in part “We are really trying to get it to where the flooding that is being caused doesn’t get into people’s homes. Having people call, reaching back quickly, finding out where they are, making sure you keep the drain hole covers cleans.”

The one thing these town officials emphasized was that it was going to take time to fix the problem.

However, for Lawter, she wants something a little different.

“Just acknowledgement? I mean, not wait 60 days to respond to something, or just make it a little easier process?" Lawter said.

Lawter and her neighbors said that when they notified the town that they were going to have a reporter come cover the story that is when the town stepped in and came to the property.

She did applaud Jenkins and Cornette for their work when they got to her property and say they hope to have solution in the near future.

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Another Charleston-area shopping center recently changed hands at nearly twice the price paid for it eight years ago.

Greensboro, N.C.-based Koury Corp. bought the Harris Teeter-anchored Sawmill Village Shopping Center at 680 Bacons Bridge Road in Summerville on Dec. 16 from Ferncroft Capital of Charlotte for $25.7 million, according to Dorchester County land records.

Ferncroft bought the 13.5-acre retail site in 2013 for $13.46 million, according to property records.

The commercial transaction comes a few days after Stiles Corp. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sold the less-than-three-year-old, Publix-anchored Point Hope Commons Shopping Center in Charleston for almost $29 million.

The buyer of the retail center in the sprawling Cainhoy Plantation development on Clements Ferry Road was an affiliate of Prudential Real Estate Advisors of Madison, N.J., according to Berkeley County land records.

Another newly built Charleston apartment building changed hands in December while a Charlotte firm plans to transform a North Charleston office building after paying more than $6 million for the highly visible site beside Interstate 26.

3: Number of new restaurants now open or on the way in Charleston, North Charleston and Pringletown in Berkeley County.

52: The number of the U.S. highway that runs through Goose Creek and Moncks Corner. The Berkeley County corridor is being studied to form a blueprint for future growth.

111,175: Number of homes sold across South Carolina through November, breaking last year’s record sales in 11 months.

+ Moving on: Brian Hicks writes The Jasper, an upscale project several years in the making on Charleston’s southern peninsula, is open for business and 99 percent occupied as the controversy and legal fight surrounding its construction is in the rearview mirror.

+ Policy shift: North Charleston is reconsidering its short-term vacation rental policy.

+ Law school lawsuit: The Charleston School of Law is suing the city of Charleston, alleging it is holding up a nearly $13 million land sale to a hotel developer.

Slim Chickens is a fast-casual restaurant chain based in Fayetteville, Ark. Franchisees plan to open nine new restaurants in eastern South Carolina, in Charleston, Florence and Myrtle Beach.

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