South Carolina Emergency Management Division
A proposed map of hurricane risk-based zones, according to the South Carolina Emergency Management Division.
If you’ve ever sat in hurricane evacuation traffic, you know that it’s all about timing. So much goes into the strategic plan to evacuate, such as the path of the hurricane, when it might make landfall and where it is estimated to hit.
Seabrook Island Town Administrator Joe Cronin attended a recent presentation in Charleston County about the current evacuation zones in South Carolina. The S.C. Emergency Management Department (SCEMD) presented possible changes to the current evacuation zones.
The major change would be with prioritizing the sea island communities up and down the coast first for evacuation.
Currently, the zones include inland areas with the coastal communities. For example, right now, Johns Island and West Ashley are in the same zone as Seabrook and Kiawah Islands. And, when it comes to the upper part of Charleston County, called zone C, Sullivan’s Island, Dewees Island and Isle of Palms are lumped in with all of Mount Pleasant.
“By changing the zones, you can be more precise with evacuations,” Cronin said.
The new zones would have the first zone starting at the coast, the second zone would be inland adjacent to the coast and the third zone would be further inland along the coast.
Cronin said that the new evacuation zones consider those that are more at risk first. “This will be more proficient and will focus more on those areas that have higher risk of damage.”
Cronin went on to say that in incidents that can maybe delay evacuation, they can get the people in the highest risk zones evacuated first and then maybe wait one or two weather reports later before they decide to evacuate the next, more inland, zone.
“These new zones will be more efficient with getting people out of the higher danger areas,” Cronin said.
The coastal communities in zone A would be Edisto, Seabrook, Kiawah, Folly, Sullivan’s Island, Isle of Palms and then the coastal communities north of Charleston County. Zone B would be Johns Island, Wadmalaw, parts of Mount Pleasant and downtown Charleston.
“As you move away from the coast, your level of risk would be deemed lower,” Cronin remarked.
SCEMD has already started to implement the new evacuation zones in Horry and Colleton counties. They would implement these zones in 2024 in Charleston County, if they were adopted by SCEMD, after a major public information push. Right now, these proposed zones are subject to change.
Cronin explained that SCEMD ran through 1,000 different scenarios and took out the worst of the 1,000 potential situations to create these zones.
The presentation showed a helpful way to look at the amount of people evacuating in the new proposed zones versus the current zones.
Current Zone Population Evacuating
Zone A – 173,832
Zone B – 156,550
Zone C –110,331
New Zone Population Evacuating
Zone A – 18,718
Zone B – 115,862
Zone C – 296,911
The amount of people evacuating first would drop by 90%. The idea behind this is to help ease the traffic getting out of the Lowcountry and to hopefully eliminate the need to reverse I-26.
“18,000 to 20,000 people all leaving at once first is much lower and easier to handle than 175,000 or so,” Cronin said. “This will help get people out at highest risk first and more efficiently.”
Cronin also noted that these numbers only account for residents and does not account for visitors, which could increase the numbers pretty significantly depending on when the hurricane were to hit – especially around a holiday like Labor Day Weekend.
The intensity of the hurricane would also be considered in these plans. If it were a Category 4, Cronin said that obviously everyone would essentially be evacuated in Charleston County.
“With those storms that sort of ride up the coast or if it were a Category 2, then these evacuation zones would be adhered to,” Cronin said.
Cronin asked SCEMD on whether the coastal communities would be evacuated more because of the early call that would have to be made for the island communities. SCEMD’s response was that if evacuations were called, that theoretically, the island communities would experience an earlier evacuation order and that could perhaps happen more often, but that the reason was because there was a greater threat to life and property.
To learn more about the current evacuation zones, visit scemd.org/prepare/know-your-zone/.
