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Historic Flood Waters Nearly Ripped Through Cherokee Boulevard

Elgin, SC (WLTX) - According to residents Cherokee Boulevard in Elgin was ripped apart by rising waters last October.

"Whenever there's a storm warning or something for around here, we don't get it. It misses us, so I always joke with my husband saying, 'Its not coming'. Well it came," Nancy Meetze said.

Like many of us, Nancy Meetze and her husband Michael were not ready for the rain.

"We didn't think it was going to be that bad, but then the following morning that's when the bucket fell out," she said.

"It was amazing. It was amazing that areas you would never believe would be washed out," Michael Meetze said.

That included right around the corner from their home on Cherokee Boulevard in Elgin.

The stream that runs under the road overflowed.

"I actually drove up that road before it basically collapsed. It scared the living crap out of me because any wrong move and I could have had that vehicle in the hole and it just wasn't nice," she said.

And they weren't the only ones who were surprised

"Nobody was expecting it and it just all of a sudden came," Preston Padgett said.

Padgett lives down the street from the Meetzes.

The initial flooding and aftermath of destruction hurt his business as a mechanic because no one could get to him.

"I was shut down for a while. I was almost two to three months until I finally got the people to understand that they had to go through the summit to try and get to me," Padgett said.

But he said faith is what kept him going.

"I had God on our side, so that's what helped us out the most," said Padgett.

A year later the road's been fixed, Preston's back to fixing cars and Nancy says she's learned her lesson.

She said she is going to take the next storm warning a little more serious.

"I won't go to the extreme as to raiding all of the shelves of the grocery stores, but I'll have a little bit extra food to stock up on before it does hit us," she said.

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