How much has Beaufort County grown in the past decade? Ask the coroner
Beaufort County has grown quickly in the past decade. You can see it from the burgeoning demand for housing, increased traffic and new businesses.
You can also tell by the number of people dying.
Deaths have increased by nearly 83% in the past 11 years, according to Beaufort County Coroner David Ott in a recent budget proposal.
The county grew by 18% between 2010 and 2019, from around 162,000 residents to 192,000 residents, the most recent census data finds. But growth in municipalities exploded. Bluffton’s population, for example, increased around 96% between 2010 and 2019.
As a result, the Coroner’s office has had to spend more: more trips to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for autopsies, more training for its personnel, and more overtime pay.
The agency requested a 10% increase in the upcoming budget, which the county must approve by July 1.
“The [budget] increase is mainly due to the amounts of deaths we have incurred as a result of population growth,” Ott said when reached by phone.
The cost of autopsies at MUSC went up, along with the cost of toxicology tests, he said. Those help coroners determine a person’s cause of death.
With more deaths and need for autopsies, the coroner asked for an increase by around $50,000 for that line item.
Ott grew up in Beaufort County, having moved here in 1957. He’s seen it change.
“You could leave Beaufort County, especially south of the Broad [River], for 2 years, come back, and then not recognize it,” Ott said. “It grew so fast. It’s unbelievable.”
Deaths in 2020
The year 2020 also brought unique challenges to the Coroner’s office.
While Ott acknowledges COVID-19 made up some of last year’s 1,692 deaths, he said the steady population growth was still driving the increase.
The year exposed other issues the county is facing.
From 2019 to 2020, there was a 50% increase in overdose deaths, Ott said.
“Opioids and fentanyl are the biggest problem we have,” he said.
This matches the rest of the country, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that overdoses accelerated during the pandemic.
In Beaufort County, car crash fatalities have remained consistent: 19 in 2019 and 23 in 2020.
Drownings reached a morbid peak of 11 last year, up from eight the year before.
“That’s pretty high,” Ott noted.
At least two of the victims were children, a 2-year-old in an unoccupied Hilton Head pool and a 9-year-old at a Shell Point birthday party.
Suicides and accidental deaths are up, too.
To meet the rise, Coroner Ott hopes the county can eventually hire its own forensic pathologist, so it can perform most autopsies in-house. The current timetable to get a full autopsy report is 8 weeks or longer.
“We have learned to grow with the growth throughout the county,” Ott said. “We do our best to stay on top of it.”
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 4:32 AM.
