Home Care In Pawleys Island, SC

PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. (WBTW) — Some homes in Pawleys Island faced major storm damage from Idalia.

That damage was evident on True Blue Drive, where residents said it sounded like a train was coming right before a tree fell on top of their house.

“You know, everything happened at one time — the tree crashed, all we heard was a loud noise and we just went to the other side of the house as quickly as possible,” Shannon Wyrick said.

Tropical Storm Idalia swept through the Grand Strand area Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning.

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The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for the coastline that was in effect from about noon until 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Many residents in Pawleys Island said at about 6 p.m. there was some rain and wind out, but out of nowhere the conditions picked up intensely.

“We just knew between six and all night long that the hurricane would pass through, so I thought the worst part would be later on, so we’re just sitting there after work eating some grapes,” Wyrick said.

Wyrick was in her mother’s home when she and her friend heard a train-like sound and a second later, a tree from their front yard came crashing into the room.

Both Wyrick and her mother said that in the 20 years of living in their Pawleys Island home, they’ve never experienced what felt like a tornado.

“It was just the scariest noise you can think of, just like, loud, because it was just like a tornado, tree crashing, right next to us from the window, we just instantly stood up and tried to go,” Wyrick said. “I knew the safest room in the house would be the laundry room, so we just stood up and I said, ‘let’s go to the laundry room as quick as possible,’ and then we were like, where’s the dog, where’s my mom? We just checked on them.”

Wyrick said this was the last thing she expected to happen to them, especially during a tropical storm.

“Normally, I’m very cautious, I like to evacuate,” she said. “But this one, I was like, it’s not even going to be a hurricane, it’s just a tropical storm coming through so I was like, nothing to worry about.”

Wyrick added that even though part of their house is damaged, no one got hurt.

“Thankful we were all there to all help each other get safe,” she said.

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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. You can also read more of her work, here.

Think, “Midsommar.” Or “Shaun of the Dead.” Or, “The Wicker Man.”

These are some of the movies that have inspired 21-year-old film director Mathew Epp in a latest film project that takes place in Pawleys Island.

Epp, a Charlotte, North Carolina, resident, graduated from University of North Carolina at Charlotte recently and is working on a new project, “Eden Avenue.”

Pawleys Island has the perfect small town nature to it, Epp said. He had been visiting a friend — the lead actor — for the past five or six months and decided it was a perfect setting for the film.

“I just realized like the more and more I go down there, you know, it’s a small town,” Epp said. “It’s a local community. And it’s beautiful.”

“Eden Avenue” follows a group of recent college graduates — Michael, Allie, Nick and Brandon, as they decide to take one last vacation together.

The beach town they end up at is inviting at first, Epp said. The town name “Eden Avenue” is supposed to give the area a motherly, inviting feeling.

But there’s a darker side.

The people of Eden Avenue are infected by the algae in the waters. It turns them into a cult-like group of people bent on infecting the protagonists, Epp explained.

It takes on a theme of “group of kids versus everyone else,” he said.

All of this occurs as the protagonists face internal struggles about change. The movie is character driven, and is much more about personal conflicts, such as accepting change than the cult, he said.

With about 20 working on the project, including a crew of 10 and around five to 10 actors, it’s still a while before local residents can see Pawleys Island on the screen.

Epp said that “Eden Avenue” was still in a pre-production stage, but filming is set to begin this month and will take a few days. The crew is still working on getting permits to film in specific areas.

Local viewers can expect to see a recognizable area in Pawleys Island, including the Pawleys Inlet toward the south end of the beach. Epp said he was working with Clam Bake Cove or Oakley as possible settings as well.

He anticipates a spring 2024 release, with “Eden Avenue” distributed on public platforms and then premiering locally in theaters.

The project members are asking for donations to help with production.

And “Eden Avenue” still has some spots left for extras in some scenes, he said.

Those interested can email Fortis Fortuna Films, the production company, at [email protected].

This story was originally published August 11, 2023, 5:00 AM.

Georgetown County delayed replacing three walkways at Litchfield Beach destroyed by Hurricane Ian 10 months ago because there was no place for the contractor to stage equipment during the summer tourist season. So those walkways weren’t at risk from the storm surge expected to coincide with king tides as the remnants of Hurricane Idalia swept over South Carolina this week.

Other places were keeping a watch on the storm track, the tide chart and the rain gauge.

The town of Pawleys Island just replanted sand dunes and replaced sand fence. It also completed repairs to a stairway in Town Hall that flooded last fall.

The Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire District just reopened its station at Garden City that was flooded by Ian.

Between Ian and Idalia, both Georgetown County and the town of Pawleys Island have completed resiliency plans required by state law to be part of their comprehensive plans. Both are awaiting final approval. Each takes its cue from the state Office of Resilience, which is defined as “the ability of communities, economies and ecosystems to anticipate, absorb, recover and thrive when presented with environmental change and natural hazards.”

For Pawleys Island, the top goal is to prepare for storm events and flooding. It completed a sea level adaptation plan last year and received $250,000 in the state budget this year to help address flooding.

The town is trying to decide whether to use the funds to complete actual projects, such as installing backflow preventers in pipes that drain stormwater into Pawleys Creek, or to develop designs for larger projects that can help leverage funds for “shovel ready” projects.

“There’s a lot of opportunity,” Mayor Brian Henry said at a recent Town Council meeting.

He favors some combination of the two approaches.

“So many communities have capital improvement plans that end up doing nothing,” Council Member Rocky Holliday said. “I think we have to be cautious.”

Even as Idalia developed in the Gulf of Mexico, the town was warning property owners to prepare for this week’s king tides. To mitigate the impact of “nuisance flooding” caused by rising seas, the town has discussed raising the level of the roads and creating “living shorelines.”

The town’s resilience plan calls for ordinances to encourage “green infrastructure” and regulate the use of hard structures such as bulkheads.

Georgetown County’s plan recommends hiring a resilience coordinator to work with state and federal agencies as well as the municipalities. The coordinator would also lead a working group to help set goals and assess progress.

The plan also recommends the county improve protections for wetlands and trees as ways to reduce flooding and find ways to “guide growth away from high-risk locations.”

“It’s much more robust than what we had originally gotten,” said Pam Martin, a professor at Coastal Carolina University and executive director of the Georgetown RISE sustainable development program. In addition to working on the county plan, she was a member of the advisory council for the resilience plan that the state completed this year.

What the plans need is a common set of benchmarks for measuring progress, Martin said.

“It’s good to have recommendations, but being able to identify indicators by which we can measure our progress and have good conversations around data would make things very clear to the public,” she said. “It would be great if the counties and the state could work together and we all measure the same things.”

And those things don’t have to be complex. They could be as simple as beach walkways.

“That’s a fantastic indicator,” Martin said. They have to be replaced after every major storm. “How much are we spending?”

That’s an area where Pawleys Island can measure progress. After the First Street beach access was destroyed by Hurricane Ian, the town decided to replace it with a $5,500 plastic Mobi-mat rather than a $30,000 wooden walkway.

The mat can be rolled up and moved before a storm. The town hasn’t had to do that, because it only just received a state permit to install the mat. It’s stored under Town Hall.

Another measure would be a stormwater plan like the one Georgetown County adopted last year for the Waccamaw Neck. “How much are we spending? Where are we having flooding?” Martin said.

The county has a $2.9 million federal grant to fund drainage improvements along Highway 17 in Litchfield. County Council awarded an $877,000 contract last week for Woolpert Inc. to engineer and manage the project. It must be completed by December 2025.

Storms like Idalia help focus attention on resiliency.

“We do need events like this,” Martin said. “It reminds us of what people call climate change, an existential threat. It’s a threat now.”

Georgetown County Board of Education: First and third Tuesdays, 5:30 p.m., Beck Education Center. For details, go to gcsd.k12.sc.us. Georgetown County Council: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 5:30 p.m., Council Chambers, 129 Screven St., Georgetown. For details, go to georgetowncountysc.org. Pawleys Island Town Council: Second Mondays, 5 p.m. Town Hall, 323 Myrtle Ave. For details, go to townofpawleysisland.com. , .

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PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. (WPDE) — Some residents are upset after a street in a Pawleys Island neighborhood was turned into a private road.

Many said they were never informed of the change on about a 75-yard section of Heather Drive in the Hagley Estates.

A petition to make Heather Drive private was filed in court back in May and recently approved by a master in equity judge.

According to one nearby resident, her cul-de-sac has been cut off from Heather Drive. Many neighbors -- including the property owners association president – said no one was ever notified.

“It’s frustrating that we didn’t know. It’s very frustrating because that’s the route I take in and out of my house every day. If I went the other way around. It would add 6 minutes to my day every day,” said Nicole Stevenson, who lives on the cul-de-sac next to the private road.

Even the post office wasn't notified initially, which meant some residents were temporarily cut off from getting their mail.

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“My sister who is a senior and our handicapped nephew, who is mentally challenged, they have to have frequent medication deliveries and so waiting on those things was kind of frustrating,” said Susan Jeffers, who also lives on the cul-de-sac next to the private road," said Susan Jeffers.

SC code 57-9-10 requires anyone who files a petition for a road closure to post their intentions on the street and publish it in a newspaper once a week for three consecutive weeks.

The South Carolina Press Association tracks such legal notices -- and their database shows no publications were made in papers of record relating to Heather Drive.

Residents said they've informed the county council that no signs were ever posted and they've started an online petition to turn Heather Drive public again, and it's gained about 300 signatures.

“I contacted county council. I know neighbors have gone to meetings. I’ll be at the next council meeting. I’ve contacted everyone I can,” said Stevenson.

ABC15 reached out to the three parties who filed the petition to find out why they turned the road private.

Two declined to comment and one did not respond in time for this publication.

We also reached out to the Georgetown County Attorney and they responded with the following:

"Heather Drive was not closed by any action or process of Georgetown County's Administration or public services department. as a result, the county is unable to reverse this action."