‘Wall of water’ hit Port Royal’s Butler Marine docks during Elsa. Was it a tornado?
The waters of Battery Creek at the Port of Port Royal were getting a little rough late that night. Then came the hard rain, followed by a whiteout.
“Then, you know, it’s a wall of water of about 5 to 7 feet that takes out the docks,” said Chris Butler, owner of Butler Marine Dry Stack and Sales.
Security camera footage captured the surge of water and wind at Butler Marine that also hit two cruise ships tied at the former state Ports Authority terminal building next door.
It was near midnight July 7 when Tropical Storm Elsa swept through coastal South Carolina.
Was it a tornado that caused water to crash on the waterfront?
The National Weather Service confirmed that a tornado touched down on nearby Parris Island, and that it “was likely the same storm” that moved into Port Royal several minutes later, around 11:50 p.m. The weather service did not have a report of the wave that hit Butler Marine.
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Butler suspects it was the twister that whipped up the the wave and wind and caused more than $200,000 in damage to his waterfront business, wiping out two-thirds of his docks, blowing a hole in a hurricane-strength door and damaging a few boats.
At 11:41 p.m. July 7, the camera footage shows the growing intensity of the storm in the Port of Port Royal. First it’s raining, then the rain becomes more horizontal due to increasing winds. Then comes the wall of water. And then the video stops. That’s when power was lost. The camera is mounted 15 feet high on a pole about 100 feet from the dock.
Unfortunately for Butler, because Elsa was a named storm he says he’ll have to meet the $100,000 deductible on his insurance policy. The deductible would have been far lower had the storm not been named, he said.
The damaged docks alone will cost $150,000 to replace, Butler said.
The storm also blew a hole in a 20-by-31-foot roll-up metal door to the dry stack building. That door was rated to withstand 125-mph hurricane winds. That’s another $50,000, Butler says. And because of that damage, he’s had to hire security to watch over the facility, adding thousands more to his costs.
A 10,000-pound boat also was knocked over.
A platform with a large air conditioning unit mounted outside an office building also was ripped out of the ground.
Surge was short-lived
Butler said the high winds and surge of water lasted only about 15 seconds, and hit a very isolated area, with boats being knocked over in one place and smaller boats 40 feet away unaffected.
The morning after the storm, O’Quinn Marine Construction removed the floating and damaged docks, potential boating hazards, from the water.
The wind and wave also affected two cruise ships tied up next door at the old terminal building. More than 30 wooden pilings were cracked when the ships slammed into them.
The ships were not damaged, but the pilings need to be replaced, said Whit Suber, owner of Grey Ghost Properties. Each one will cost $2,000 to $2,500 to replace, Suber said.
The town of Port Royal has said previously that Tropical Storm Elsa caused between $750,000 and $1 million in structural damage to 44 buildings in the town, but that’s just a ballpark estimate, Town Manager Van Willis said. The evaluation does not include damage to content or equipment in the buildings, Willis added.
