LOOKING AT SOUTH CAROLINA COASTAL EMERGENCY PLANNING THROUGH THE LENS OF HURRICANE SANDY: MODELING VARIABILITY IN HURRICANE SIZE AND TRACK

As Hurricane Sandy made her way up the Eastern Seaboard, South Carolina was one of the original states that Sandy was forecast to impact. While South Carolina was fortunate that Sandy took a turn to the northern states, the issues that those states have been and are currently dealing with could have happened to South Carolina. In 2011, South Carolina had a Hurricane Evacuation Study completed for all the coastal counties. One of the main findings for the Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester (tri-county) area was that the population of these coastal areas has dramatically increased, but there was no new transportation infrastructure developed to allow for more efficient evacuations. Additionally, the current coastal regulations limit mitigation strategies in the low country leaving it more susceptible to hurricane events. Currently South Carolina has mandatory evacuations for hurricanes that trigger automatic lane reversals for major highways.

This study looks at Hurricane Sandy and her potential impacts to SC using HAZUS and HURREVAC. HAZUS is FEMA’s software for modeling natural disasters to look at mitigation, and recovery for areas. HURREVAC is a decision-support tool used by emergency managers to gather the information they need to assist their evacuation decisions. Using four different Sandy runs this study investigates how changes in Sandy’s track would have impacted the tri-county region. The storm tracks modeled in this study include the historic Sandy track as well as a version of the track where the storm strengthened to a category three storm on her route northward. Furthermore, two deviated tracks were prepared based on early Sandy models that projected the storm making landfall at Folly Beach South Carolina tri-county area, Category one and three storms were modeled. These model runs have been developed to provide managers in the region potential damage estimates and evacuation clearance times.