Keeping eye on Hurricane Matthew is the new Hilton Head ‘hunkering down’

The only thing uprooting Hamp Greene from Hilton Head Island this week will be a golf game.

During a break from moving lawn furniture Wednesday morning, Greene said he may leave Friday but only to play golf back home in Greenwood.

Other than that, the threat of Hurricane Matthew is nothing but a blip on the screen in his 40 years of hunkering down on Hilton Head when most people evacuate.

During the last evacuation for Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Greene cooked 400 hamburgers for a ravenous crowd at Jump & Phil’s, one of the few places that stayed open.

“I sent my mother-in-law and sister-in-law off this morning,” he said, “but right now I don’t see a need to leave.”

He had plenty of company Wednesday morning, prior to the announced mandatory evacuation at 3 p.m. Hilton Head was far from a ghost town.

“ ‘Keeping an eye on it’ is the new ‘hunkered down,’ ” said attorney Denny Fraser as he was buying food at Sam’s Club. “That’s what we’re doing.”

Dale Woolsey, who was stocking up on blueberries and other food, said he had no intention of leaving.

“Not unless it makes a dramatic change,” he said. “Not unless it looks like we’d take a direct hit. Right now, it looks like it will bypass us.”

If push came to shove, he said, they would probably go stay with a daughter in Atlanta.

On St. Helena Island, John Bowman hunkered down in his new home on 10-foot stilts with his wife and two children, ages 13 and 8. He sits on an elevation of about 9 feet, near Wallace Landing.

“We’re staying,” he said. He’s from Florida, where he lived through Hurricane Andrew and others. He saw no threat in Hurricane Matthew.

“I’d be out of work for four days for one thing,” he said. “I can’t take a vacation.”

He has an internet-based business from the home.

He thinks he has what it will take to weather the storm.

“I don’t want to act like we’re invincible, but we’re set up to be able to go about a month,” Bowman said.

“Everybody has a different situation. I could be a fool — but we’ll see.”

Gene Baldwin, a Lowcountry native and general manager of the Sea Shack, said, “I planned to go to Columbia, but not till Friday. If it turns much more, I’ll stay.”

David Martin, owner of the Piggy Wiggly in Coligny Plaza, said, “I’m going to leave last because of my store. Now, I’m not foolhardy. I’m not one of these people who will chain himself to a tree and say he’ll never leave. I will leave, but usually by the time I can go, there’s no need to go.”

A woman watching her dog run in Hilton Head’s dog park said, “I don’t want to sit in traffic with that crowd getting out of here, and I don’t want to sit with them coming back.”

Besides, others said, motel rooms as far away as Macon, Ga., were scooped up my mid-afternoon Tuesday.

Betsy Doughtie, executive director of the Deep Well Project, was in the nonprofit’s pantry helping clients pick up free food Wednesday morning. She said it was hard to find the information, but she was telling them public shelters would be open in Hampton and Ridgeland.

Hilton Head grocery stores and pharmacies were open Wednesday morning, along with a number of restaurants. Life guards were on duty on the sparsely populated beach. Most gas pumps on the south end of the island were empty. There was no charge on the Cross Island Parkway toll road, and it was fairly empty.

But plenty of people were stirring under gray skies with hints of wind. They were keeping an eye on Hurricane Matthew and chit-chatting on what they thought was the latest information.

“It’s turning,” was the common cry.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Keeping eye on Hurricane Matthew is the new Hilton Head ‘hunkering down’."