ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Flooding across Orangeburg County has left many roads impassable, with local officials warning that repairs may take time. Road closures and submerged infrastructure continue to impact daily life and travel for residents in central and western parts of the county.
“We’ve got several major roads that have major damage to them; that's gonna take significant repairs,” Orangeburg County Emergency Management Director Billy Staley said.
Adding, “It’s quite an effort to navigate from the western side of the county to the eastern side of the county due to the outages on the infrastructure issues," he added. "We’re working very aggressively with DOT [the Department of Transportation],” he said.
According to South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) spokesperson Hannah Robinson, their crews have been working non-stop since the onset of the flooding, keeping a close watch on affected areas and coordinating recovery efforts.
“Our crews will not stop until things are back to normal in Orangeburg," she said. "Our crews were out there yesterday when this rain was still happening. They were monitoring the roads where they were seeing flooding and closing those roads and making sure they were keeping people off the areas they could get in a dangerous situation, so we've been all hands on deck since this started."
With 167 roads in the county currently closed, SCDOT teams will assess the damage further when conditions are deemed safe, expediting repairs once water levels recede.
“Once the water recedes in that problem area, we will have crews that will go out and assess damages [and] see what kind of repairs needs to be made, and then we will go into expediting those repairs when it’s safe to do so," Robinson said.
Staley said efforts will continue over the weekend, with updates expected by mid-week to provide a clearer timeline for the repair process and road reopening.