Hurricane Matthew's impact: Picking up the pieces at CCU
by Prufer
Hurricane Matthew made landfall on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 8, near McClellanville and traveled up the Carolinas coast as a Category 1 storm, bringing sustained winds of 75 mph and torrential rains, flooding, downed trees, structural damage, power outages and more.
“If that was a Category 1 storm, I won’t be around for a 2, 3 or 4,” was a common refrain from members of the campus community who stayed in the area during the storm.
Coastal Carolina University closed campus for a week when S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley issued an evacuation order. CCU bused 47 students to Clemson University to wait out the storm, and sent remaining faculty and staff home to get ready for the storm or to evacuate, depending on where they lived. Many of the students who went to Clemson were international students.
Faculty and staff returned Wednesday, Oct. 12, and classes resumed the following day.
But it has not been easy recovering from the storm. There was damage to campus buildings, and cultural events were canceled and/or rescheduled, including the popular U.S. Marine Band performance and the Miracle Network Dance Marathon. Many students and faculty who evacuated the area returned to flooded streets and highways, forcing them to take long detours. One student spent seven hours driving from Raleigh, N.C., back to CCU, normally a three-hour drive.
“The major concern that we saw on campus was downed trees and limbs,” said Rein Mungo, interim director of facilities and management. “At that point, it was not safe for anyone to be on campus. We had to move a lot of trees and hanging limbs that would have fallen on anyone walking around campus. The buildings on campus did pretty well. We didn’t have the major structural damage that a lot of buildings had in the area. We did have some roof damage, which led to leaks inside the buildings, so we did have quite a few ceiling tiles to be replaced and carpet/floors to be cleaned.”
On campus, 75 trees were damaged or destroyed in the hurricane, including some that fell on roofs, bridges, rails and the cooling plant. The power went out in most buildings, but generators kicked in. Roof damage occurred to Brittain Hall, Baxley Hall, the HTC Center, Atheneum Hall, Wheelwright Auditorium and the Wall Building. The Swain Science Hall had substantial leaks around the chimneys on both ends of the building.
“Sunday morning we began the cleanup process to remove the huge trees that were on University Boulevard by Kearns Hall so that traffic could flow,” said Mungo.
CCU’s Georgetown Education Center on Front Street sustained flooding damage.
In addition to the campus cleanup, some Grand Strand beaches also suffered. Dunes were blown into the streets, and untreated sewage reached a portion of the beach over the weekend. CCU’s Environmental Quality Lab conducted water quality sampling following a pump station malfunction.
On Wednesday the week after the storm, the Chanticleer bus returned from Clemson University with sleepy students wearing orange T-shirts that read “TealNation in TigerTown” that the students made during their stay upstate.
Husain Alawami of South Arabia, who is at CCU to learn English, said he used the time at Clemson to study. Joshua Mishoe, who lives in Tradition Hall, said he had planned to be on a Jamaican tour and was thankful to get refuge at Clemson after Hurricane Matthew hit Jamaica as a cagegory 4.
“They treated us real nice and made us feel welcome on campus,” said Mishoe, who was glad to be headed to his own bed. “It’s been like a good little vacation. I got a lot of homework finished.”
McKenzi Grant, a freshman from Effort, Pa., said the Clemson residence hall the CCU students were in was very old but a welcome shelter nonetheless.
“We were glad to leave CCU and glad to come back,” said Veronica Booth, a freshman from Maryland.
For some students, Saturday classes might be required to make up missed academic time.
