On the day of Hurricane Dorian, Beaufort County’s coastal residents board up ... and wait

Beaufort County was largely quiet Wednesday as non-evacuees waited on Hurricane Dorian to churn its way toward South Carolina’s coast.

Shops were boarded up, sandbags stacked at the doors of businesses that had flooded during previous storms, and small gatherings popped up where the standard greeting seemed to be, “Are you planning to stay?”

Late Wednesday morning, local officials continued to impress upon residents the danger of the storm.

“Evacuation is still an opportunity right now,” Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said in an 11 a.m. news briefing.

The eye of Dorian was expected to pass just 50 miles off the coast of Hilton Head Island around 2 a.m. Thursday as a Category 2 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center’s afternoon update on the storm’s track.

The storm’s outer bands of wind and rain began making an appearance around 3:30 p.m.

Here is a look at what people were up to before Dorian’s arrival Wednesday — and before the 10 p.m. county-wide curfew went into effect:

North of the Broad River

BEAUFORT AND PORT ROYAL

Firefighters rolled through town Wednesday morning and used public address systems to encourage residents to evacuate while there was still time.

One of their first storm calls was for a large limb down during a rain shower Wednesday morning. Just after noon, a tree fell on power lines at Ribaut Road and Waddell Road.

Beaufort-Port Royal Fire Chief Reece Bertholf noted how many trees had toppled during Hurricane Matthew, and warned residents of the dangers with this storm.

“So if you’re still on the fence about leaving,” Bertholf said, “the message is go ahead and go.”

Mid-afternoon, water from Battery Creek covered the Sands Beach and boat landing during high tide in Port Royal. A stream of cars and even a family on a golf cart drove to the landing during a steady rain to witness the high water rising just under the boardwalk.

At Madison’s restaurant a few blocks from the waterfront, regulars crowded the L-shaped wooden bar. The satellite feed cut in and out on the TV above the bar, which was showing U.S. Open tennis coverage.

Beaufort resident Mike James, with a bottle of beer and glass of water, had no plans to evacuate.

He said he has never left his longtime brick home in Mossy Oaks during a hurricane.

LADY’S ISLAND

Around 2:30 p.m., a woman living on a sailboat moored in Factory Creek was brought to the nearby Whitehall Boat Landing by rescue officials in a boat after she had second thoughts about riding out the storm, a Beaufort Police Department spokesman said.

Volunteers with Beaufort Water Search and Rescue helped bring the woman to shore while police and fire officials assisted.

South of the Broad River

BLUFFTON

Around noon, Josh Cooke, owner of The Corner Perk, was closing up for the day and relaxing outside the coffee shop with his family and a few friends when a man on a horse trotted down Calhoun Street.

“Where’d you come from, Bo?” someone asked him.

“Everywhere,” the man replied before riding past the cafe and down May River Road.

Cooke’s wife, Kali, snapped a photo of the horse as it passed a Lamborghini parked nearby.

Josh went to post the photo to The Corner Perk’s Instagram page.

“Taking my horse to Old Town Road,” he wrote. “Bluffton’s getting weird again.”

Later in the afternoon, the Bluffton Township Fire Department continued to prepare for whatever Hurricane Dorian would bring in the next 24 hours.

Their minds were occasionally elsewhere as they were mourning the loss of one of their own.

Bill Martin, who worked as the fire marshal in Bluffton until his retirement, died Saturday in his Walterboro home after a battle with cancer.

Flags at Bluffton’s eight fire stations were flying at half staff in honor of Martin. Black bunting was hanging at the front of the garage at the district’s headquarters where the fire engines and trucks sat, waiting to be called out to fight Dorian.

Martin previously served as a captain for the Hilton Head Fire Department, a chief for the City of Hardeeville Fire Department and assistant chief for the Bluffton Township Fire District, prior to his tenure and retirement as Bluffton’s fire marshal.

Just before 5 p.m. only a few people in golf carts were seen out and about on the back roads of Old Town.

Some families were hanging out on front porches.

TV screens could be seen from the street.

They were tuned to the weather forecast.

HILTON HEAD ISLAND

Few cars were on the roads Wednesday. Shopping centers, gas stations and fast food joints were dark, many boarded and piled with sandbags.

That included the Enmarket on Thompson Street, boarded and empty, with the only sign of life a house speaker system still playing ‘90s music.

The Publix on Pope Avenue was closed, but the store left 28 pallets of bottled water outside its front entrance for people who need it.

Residents were well aware of Gov. Henry McMaster’s evacuation order — issued Sunday evening — but some had reasons to stick around.

Mikki Rolain and her husband, Jeff Rolain, were lounging on the patio of her restaurant Wednesday morning, sheltered from a light rain under a large umbrella.

Rolain said they were sticking behind so they could make immediate repairs to Mikki’s Cafe if a tree falls on the roof. They will pass the time with a stack of old movies, Jenga and a deck of cards.

Rolain said she wasn’t worried for her safety. But she is concerned about the tall pines surrounding her restaurant, and the havoc heavy rains could cause if her cafe’s roof is damaged.

She added that her friends were skeptical of the governor’s evacuation order after the island was evacuated last year for a storm that ultimately brought minimal damage.

“This year, I don’t think a lot of people left because of what happened last year,” Rolain said. “It’s almost like crying wolf.”

Her cafe has been closed three days. The evacuation order, she said, will hurt her business.

“This time of year, you do get concerned about paying bills,” she said.

Along the beach at Port Royal Plantation, winds picked up sand and sea foam as Paulette Giroux of Port Royal walked Wednesday morning.

“I just thought before it all came, let me see what’s going on,” Giroux said, “It’s Mother Nature at its best and worst.”

On the north-end of the island, Irene Soto was preparing to leave.

She had wanted to stay and spent days checking the Weather Channel and The Island Packet’s website for updates on Hurricane Dorian, hoping for news that the storm would shift away from her home near Squire Pope Road on Hilton Head Island.

Such assurances never came, so she decided to evacuate just before the storm arrived.

“I’m nervous,” the 29-year-old medical assistant said just after noon Wednesday as she rounded up her two daughters — Jiselle, 6, and Yanely, 5 — and three pit bulls for the long drive trip to Richburg, S.C., where they have reserved a hotel room.

Soto said she is already dreading not knowing how her mobile home will fare in the storm. Her family spent Wednesday morning nailing plywood boards from the Bluffton Home Depot to the windows of her home.

“It’s hard to know when we’ll be back,” she said. “But we can’t risk it.”

Oliver Salmon was less concerned. The 49-year-old cook was walking with his family on a sidewalk along Squire Pope Road, taking in the fresh air and slight breeze before they bunker down in their apartment in the Cedar Wells community.

He said they plan to read books, light candles and eat fried chicken and canned beans if they lose power during the storm.

Early in the afternoon, native islander Alex Brown Jr. drove to Harbour Town to check on two of his souvenir shops.

One of the lighthouse-shaped shops was boarded up with plywood planks. The other had already been retrofitted with hurricane-resistant glass.

Decades of living on Hilton Head has resigned Brown to what will likely happen over the next few days.

Storm surge brought by Dorian will flood at least one of his shops, which are a baseball’s toss away from the Calibogue Sound. Choppy waves were already lapping over the Harbour Town pier just before the 1:11 p.m. high tide, as strong gusts whipped rain into the faces of passersby.

Brown knows he will have to pay contractors to remove his shop’s hardwood floors, dry them out and clean the store to prevent a mold outbreak.

The shops could be out of business a month — like after Hurricane Irma in 2017. Or, if Dorian hits as hard as Hurricane Matthew in 2016, he could be out of commission until February.

Brown plans to ride out the storm at his Chaplin area home, where his family has lived for generations.

“Not many people can trace their heritage to a particular place, and we can,” he said. “It’s worth a hurricane every now and then.”

Around 2 p.m. Wednesday, Calvin Detwiler, who moved to Bluffton this year, was swept down Singleton Beach after he took a dip in the surging ocean. He escaped without injury and got out of the ocean at an exclusive beach neighborhood several hundred feet away.

Detwiler said despite the danger, he couldn’t resist taking his boogie board into the sea so he could ride waves

“This is my first hurricane.’‘

“It’s good waves right now,’‘ he said. “Usually you have 2- to 3-footers but you’re getting 6-footers out there now.’‘

Around 2:30 p.m. at Hilton Head Island Fire and Rescue’s north end headquarters, Mayor John McCann and town manager Steve Riley were at the Hilton Head Public Service District, where they planned to hunker down during the storm.

Green cots lined the corner offices where by day, people answer questions about water service and fire hydrants.

McCann and Riley exchanged trail mix and sipped on colas and then headed out to tour fire stations and survey the island.

Around 6:30 p.m., the shrimp boats docked at Hudson’s Seafood House on the Docks, which was badly damaged in Hurricane Matthew and again flooded during Tropical Storm Irma, began heading away from the island for protection.

Contributing to this report were Avery Wilks and Sammy Fretwell from The State; Stephen Fastenau, Katherine Kokal, Liz Farrell and Lana Ferguson of The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette; McClatchy videographer Jessica Koscielniak; and Jeff Siner of the Charlotte Observer.

This story was originally published September 4, 2019 at 7:45 PM.