[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jackie Broach, and this is first Friday with Georgetown county. Thank you for joining us. Our first guest today is Ray funny, director of Georgetown County Public Services. Ray, we are working on something pretty exciting right now regarding Brown fields and a $500,000 grant that we have received from the EPA. Can you talk with me a little bit about the process that we're going through right now?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you, Jackie. Thank you for having me. First of all, I'm excited about this $500,000 BrownSFields grant that we received.
The process started a long time ago and we were able to put together a team to help us apply for the EPA Brownsfields grant. And we were selected among many other communities. And that selection process is very tedious, but we have a very good opportunity here in Georgetown to identify those sites that really could be redeveloped.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Let's start simple for people who don't know, what is a brownfield?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Well, Brownfield is actually a site that's been identified as impacted by some subsurface condition or some physical condition that really says that this thing is flat, really has been needed to be replaced or need to be improved and just needed infusion to reuse the area, the land.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: So this could be, say, an abandoned gas station, an abandoned factory. It could have contamination such as asbestos or old petroleum spills, things like that. So essentially we're taking this money and we are evaluating these sites for redevelopment and what sorts of things could they be redeveloped into?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Well, I'm glad you helped clarify those identified potential sites. And those are great examples of sites that have been considered to be rehabbable.
It depends the location of the site that's being enhanced or refurbished.
If a site is in downtown Georgetown and some maybe in downtown Andrews, those sites could be repurposed for businesses that could be coming into the community to put an infusion into our economy. And so it really depends where the site's located and how large the site is, has been identified that need to be improved.
A gas station, for instance. Well, that's maybe, you know, a block or half a block, and that could come in and provide for some new stores or new industry to come to town. If there was a school system or school building that has been abandoned for a while with some subsurface problems, can you imagine that entire site potentially could be assessed and that entire area now could be repurposed for something really, really, really special. So it really depends on the size of the site and how we can reuse it and make it more, make it a better opportunity for our community.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Now, with these federal funds, there are some very specific criteria as far as location. Correct. Talk with me about the locations that are eligible because we are looking for recommendations from members of the public. Correct. Of places that could be assessed.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Quite frankly, I was surprised as well on that. We had census tracts that were identified as areas in our grant.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Most people don't know what census tract they're in, but in general, layman's terms, the areas that we're looking at right now would be the city of Georgetown.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Yes. Actually, from city of Georgetown going west to Andrews. So there is a corridor from Cinema Georgia down, going west along 521. There's a corridor of area that is encompassed in the area. And the town of Andrews is also included. I suspect there may be some, potentially some bronze free opportunities between here and Andrews as well, because they are. I suspect there were abandoned service stations that had not been properly disposed of and those areas could be again improved as well. Yes.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: So we did have our first two community meetings to kind of introduce this to the public last month. And what's happening now? Do you know if we have received any suggestions of sites that could be redeveloped?
[00:05:08] Speaker B: We did. We did receive some. We received some additional sites that someone called my office last week to identify some sites in the tongue of Andrews.
And we. I think we have another meeting planned for the 30th, I believe, of September, for a fallout meeting to invite others to come and participate in this process.
So we're now open to listen to any suggestions that 1 may have regarding a potential site that needs to be looked at and assessed. This is the first phase. We are just assessing the conditions, providing phase one inspection, which basically we hire engineering firm to come out and inspect the site to make sure that we can identify what's being impacted or if anything is being impacted. So that's first step. That's part of that's assessment phase.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: And how long does this first step last?
[00:06:07] Speaker B: The first step lasts. It depends on the number of sites that we have to inspect. We have some time to do the entire first phase, which is assessment, and submit this documentation to the federal agencies to see whether we could go to the next level, which is really the next phase is really identifying funds to come back and make those improvements.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: So is there more grant funding potentially available if we have sites turn on?
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Yes. Once the sites have been identified and prioritized, then we will submit our findings to the Bronx Friegel's group and they will say, okay, fine. Georgetown county. I've done the first assessment, first phase, which is assessment, and now we have identified those sites that we can work on for improvement. So then we will apply for another grant which will help with that.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Okay, great. So if somebody missed these first couple of meetings that we had, one in Georgetown and one in Andrews, can they still participate in this process? Can they still recommend sites?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Yes, they sure can. I think certainly you can still recommend potential sites to us. You can come and participate in the meeting that we have planned for Monday, I believe the 30th, right here at county council chambers.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: You're in Georgetown?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: In Georgetown.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: So. And I think that you're also looking for some committee members if somebody really wants to get involved, right?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Yes. In fact, one of the requirements of this grant, we, we have to have public participation as a requirement. If you're interested in being a part of this committee, we welcome you to come out and submit your application to us so we can consider that we have a need, I think seven to nine people we need to have on our committee from the various census tracts between here and Andrews, people who are interested in the process. And this is a part of our requirements in fulfilling the requirements of the grant, is to have committee members involved in the process.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: So what exactly will this committee be tasked with helping.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Assessing, helping? Well, our engineering firm will be doing all of the heavy lifting, but at some point in time the committee and the community people will take that data, that information that they have received and kind of go through it and prioritize it and help make some decision or recommendations to the power to the higher authority. So basically the committee involvement is going to help prioritize what we've done.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: So this is a really exciting opportunity for Georgetown county. If you did miss those first couple of meetings and you want more information, Ray and our IT staff have a great webpage set up on our website, gtcounty.org brownfields, where you can find the application for the committee to nominate a. Or just general information. So please go check that out. Ray, what else is going on in public services? I know you guys are always busy.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Yes, we are.
We are always busy. And we have many opportunities. And I just think you have me today to talk about Bronx because maybe we can invite you back to talk about those.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: You can come anytime you want.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. Just reach out to me and I'll be glad to come back and share with you the work that we're doing. We have a very robust set of challenges in our group and we have the right team to make it happen.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Good.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: We really excited about work we're doing and every day is different every minute. Every day is different.
Yes, it is.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Your stormwater department in particular has been very busy lately. I know y'all just had two public hearings, I believe.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Yes, we had. And, you know, that's the nature of the beast is that we need to be able to give the public the opportunity to share their concerns.
And we think that's important.
And we'll, we'll take that information. And as we review the plans that has been submitted to us, we have our ordinance and our stonewater manual that we use to be consistent with the work that we're doing. We just not willy nilly trying to do something without having some standards. So those standards are in place. We have our team, our office team, we have a consultant working with us. So we're doing all we can to be consistent and be fair and reasonable with the petitioner, the applicant to get them their permit or not.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: And stormwater is a very complex process. We need to have you on one week just to talk about that in the MS four permit area. What else is going on? How are mosquitoes?
[00:11:07] Speaker B: We've had a better week last week than we had the previous two weeks. Yes, it's much better. And I've, in fact, I was impacted and so my barometer is usually my backyard. And I was able to this weekend to have a family gathering and, and we enjoyed it without having a lot of unwanted guests. So things are better. So our team, we have a great team of inspectors and managers, which is.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Also part of your stormwater department. As if they didn't have enough to do.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yes. Well, we have to do, in Georgetown county, you might have one or two assignments to make it happen here. So we have to do what we have to do. And certainly those inspectors for our mosquito control program also have double duty as inspectors in our stormwater program. It goes hand in hand.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: So when is mosquito season over? I'm counting the days.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Officially November.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: So about the same time as hurricane season.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Yes, actually, it goes hand in hand. And we are now doing our surveillance work right now to monitor what's happening in our communities. And so that's what our inspector is doing right now. Things are a little quiet this week as opposed two weeks ago, but we are out there every day. We have a team of drivers. We have four trucks that goes around Georgetown. We added a new truck this year. So our team is bigger this year to provide those truck applications in our communities. And so I think we're getting out there much faster and much more rarely than we have in the past with additional truck that they have this year.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: And we have moved our mosquito control request system online. It's very easy to ask for mosquito control assistance now.
So I think that's also a really good improvement. I do want to talk with you after this season is over and see, comparatively how it looked. Because we switched back to that environmentally safe mosquito control solution. And I want to see, you know, what the numbers look like compared to the previous year.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Well, we all want to make sure that the application or the material that we use is very effective. That is effective. And we want to be able to measure that as best we can and see whether the new material or the new chemical is better than what we used in previous years.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Well, like you, I use my backyard as a barometer. And except for that couple of weeks, right around the tropical storm, we had all that rain, it was. Yeah, it hasn't been bad this year. Now, those couple of weeks were enough to make up for all the rest.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: But I think I must give county council and county administrator credit for providing us the resources to bring in the heavy guns, the big guns, when we need them.
When we had a problem, we brought in our aerial applicator and we did lava siding in the rush areas along the Santee river around that area, which is really, really, really bad. But we also, a week later, came and did a dowager siding, which is handling the mosquitoes fully grown in other areas of the county. And so when that happened, in addition to our truck for trucks, it really kind of quiet things down a great deal in our brown, within our office, it's the phone calls we get. So we use that as a measuring stick as well from the public on what's happening out there while we out there every day. We're not everywhere where we could be, but the public, they are. And they give us a phone call. They don't mind calling us or sending us an email. And so that helps us to measure the performance, or lack thereof, that we were having. Some people are, you know, having challenges. And we were trying to work with our stormwater group and public works group to make sure that we can help as much as we can. But sometimes our hands are tied and we do our very best.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Now, we do try to avoid those aerial sprays for adult side, because they are, one, very expensive. And two, they don't use the environmentally friendly spray. Correct?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: So they are effective, but we try to avoid them for a number of reasons. We have had to have one so far this season. Hopefully, that will be the only one for this, hopefully that's fingers crossed.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Fingers crossed. And I'm very optimistic about that. And if we have no other tropical event or some other rainstorm event that causes that to happen, and it's mother nature and we work with her.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Ray, that is a perfect segue into our next guest. Thank you for helping me do that. Brandon Ellis is our next guest. Fantastic hurricanes. So, Ray, thank you so much for coming on, and I look forward to having you back anytime you have something to come talk about.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. And we have a wonderful opportunity to serve our public in Georgetown county, and happy to be a part of that. Thank you.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Our next guest is Brandon Ellis, our emergency services director for Georgetown county. And we have a very special guest with us, Steve Paff from the National Weather Service. We are going to be talking about hurricanes today. And Brandon, you couldn't hear, but Ray, who was on just before you, gave you a perfect intro. We were just hoping for no more EOC activations this year. And EOC, for anybody who doesn't know, is our emergency operations center, where Brandon leads our team through anything that response to any horrible thing that might happen, from hurricanes to chemical spills to whatever.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: So, Brandon, we had our first activation of the season last month with Tropical Storm Debbie, and we got really lucky. You know, for a while there, sitting in the EOC, we were kind of getting flashbacks to our Florence activation and tropical Storm Joaquin from back in 2015. So let's talk a little bit about what happened, and Steve and I'd like to hear from you a little about the forecasting aspect. We always, when a forecast is not as bad as was initially predicted, we get some people who, unfortunately, I think, forget that that's a good thing. And we just kind of like to put some clarity on how the forecasting works.
So, Brandon, let's talk a little about Tropical Storm Debbie.
[00:17:27] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So we started days ahead of Debbie's arrival, preparing for the storm, looking at the forecast, analyzing the data that was coming out of both the National Weather Service office in Wilmington, state EOC in Columbia, and the National Hurricane center. And we really used some historical data that we had based off of that forecast from, like you said, the 2015 floods, Hurricane Florence, kind of making our plan for response and posturing our resources appropriately.
We activated our EOC early that week and, you know, in preparation for a long term activation with our essential emergency support functions, present partners from across the county and areas of the state. And we, like you said, we were very fortunate. We woke up on Wednesday morning and it was you know, the forecast had changed a little. We saw some great changes in rainfall totals that were going to be impacting our area that weren't as significant as originally planned.
Knowing that that was a primary threat, we didn't reduce our posture.
We maintained our posture, maintained our resources until we were in the clear.
It was a welcoming sight to be spared for once. So we all know that recently, in past years, Georgetown county has experienced a brunt of most of the storms that have come through the area.
So, you know, we still had impacts. We still had, you know, heavy rainfall. We had some localized flooding, but not the widespread impacts that we originally thought. So we were very thankful for that.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Basically, for us, this was an ideal situation. Right. We prepared for the worst and basically got a. The best possible situation.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: Yeah, almost, you know, best possible situation would have been for the storm to completely fizzle out and never become a thing. But, you know, we did. We fared very well. We were prepared. We were ready. We had all of our resources in check. It was a good opportunity for us to pull our team together in the emergency operations center because, you know, our staff of two folks in the emergency management office here in Georgetown, we do this every day. We plan for this. We prepare for it. We are ready. We have team members that come from several different departments within the county, our municipalities, private, nonprofit sector, the private sector. They all come together to make our response occur, whenever we make it successful, whenever we have a response. Rather, like you said, this was a tropical cyclone, but it could be any emergency. And having those team members there and going through the motions, even though the impacts were less than what we had anticipated, was a good opportunity for us to ensure that the wheel was greased and ready for the rest of the season.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: And, of course, during any activation that involves a weather system like this, we talk to Steve a lot, right?
[00:20:19] Speaker C: We do. We rely on Steve and the staff at National Weather Service in Wilmington. They're our forecast office, and they're great. They're, you know, a part of our team. We participate in their conference calls or on our email threads. We're taking their information days before the storm even gets here to analyze that, to make our plan to ensure that we're prepared for the worst of the worst based off of whatever the forecast is for that given storm or situation.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Steve, I just want to take a minute to say thank you to you and your team for all that you do.
We really do rely on you, and we appreciate your forecasts. Can you tell us a little bit about, I guess, what goes into your job during situations like this.
[00:21:06] Speaker D: Yeah. And, you know, the more and more people that move to the coastal areas, the more stress that it puts on getting the information out even farther in time.
You know, we're back in the day. You know, forecast within three days was important. Now it's so critical with the infrastructure that's at risk, you know, five days and beyond, there's already some key decisions being made. So that puts a lot of stress in, into a profession where there's also, unfortunately, a lot of uncertainty. And where you see a lot of uncertainty is out over the ocean, because we just don't have a robust network of atmospheric stations, weather stations that we do over land. So it's important to send hurricane hunters out. It's important to analyze buoyancy data, and there's so few and far between.
Fortunately, we have some tools like satellite. And when the storms get a little closer to the coast, you know, the Doppler radar is a significant thing, too. So we start with observations. And when you have something developing far out at sea or down in the Caribbean, oftentimes there's some struggle in the formative stages of a tropical depression or tropical storm developing. It's a little bit different when you have something already established moving into the area versus developing within 48 hours, for example. So you have to deal with the timing and proximity of how close something is going to evolve.
But what made Debbie, its track and its forecast really interesting is the dreaded stall that was projected off the South Carolina coast. And that gives a significant pause because like Brandon mentioned with Florence, it was a slow moving storm, or the rain from Joaquin that fed into South Carolina was a slow process. So that gives a significant concern when we see that. But what ended up happening with respect to Debbie is the stall actually occurred over Savannah, over land, versus just off the coast. As you know, tropical systems, they need the heat from the ocean. They need to rob that heat from the ocean, basically, to feed the rain bands and the thunderstorms that are spiraling around this type of system. So it wasn't off the coast as long as it was projected to two, three days before its arrival. So that, I think, is one thing that really helped us and as a result, was able to pull in some drier air, at least for a day or so, off the southeast United States, and wrap into it. But when the storm moved northward, we started to see some more of those bands and in some areas had the heaviest rainfall within the days following the departure of Debbie, when we had a front that stalled in the area, but, you know, my area still saw impacts. We cover six counties in southeast north Carolina and eight in northeast South Carolina. We had some prolonged river flooding. Waccamaw is a great example of that lumber river. We had one fatality in one of our counties that we serve in Robinson county. Vehicles swept off the roadway, and we almost had a couple more. We didn't end up with three tornadoes, all of which were in southeast North Carolina. So, yeah, it could have been worse, but the farther north you went, seemingly, that's where most of the impacts ended up.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: And with most of these things, I think what we see is that it very easily could have gone the other way. These storms are so predictable. I think people forget to be happy that, you know, it happened the way it did and not that it was considerably worse than forecasted, which is also a possibility.
How easy is it for, you know, I guess how small of a difference? I'm not explaining myself very well.
[00:24:52] Speaker D: Yeah, it's the subtleties. When you. We live in a principal hurricane track.
The Bermuda high sets up to our east. It steers the storms around the Bermuda high, around that periphery, and that western periphery of that Bermuda high is often focused across the Carolinas. So a storm that's paralleling the coast, it's a game of miles, basically. If it's a little farther to the west and inland, you tend to have weaker wind potential. If it's moving fast versus slow, you can have more or less rain. Depending on the situation, the angle of incidence to the coastline could create significant storm surge, like we saw with Hugo back in 1989. So there's so many things that come into play that. That make it just a challenge. With each hazard that a storm can bring, from the tornadoes to the storm surge, to the heavy rain and the flooding and the wind aspect of it, it's a game of miles sometimes. We've seen a couple of these things just raised by. And if that storm was 1015 miles to the west, we would have had a significant hurricane force winds with some of the storms over the years. So it's very dicey. The forecasting has gotten significantly better over the years. That cone, that cone of uncertainty, the forecast cone gets narrower and narrower, which shows the skill, the incredible skill that the National Hurricane center shows with their forecasts and their specialists combined have over 175 years experience.
That's hard to top that. They know the model biases. They know the trends in which ones have been handling a situation really well. And I often get the question, well, which did better? The european model, the GFS model, or, I mean, there's hundreds of models and families of models, and it's different every time, which is why we're so fortunate as a nation to have the National Hurricane center that provides us where these storms are going to go. But also the storm surge support. I mean, Georgetown county with storm surge is incredibly unique when it comes to the oceanfront surge or the city of Georgetown, all the hydrology that comes into play.
I'm just grateful we have these tools. I don't know how they did it 20, 3100 years ago.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: I think that the more advances we see in this technology, people almost expect you to be psychic. They seem to forget that it is still a forecast, and so they expect you to be right every time. But Brandon, going back to those subtleties, I mean, this is why you always have to plan for the very worst thing that could possibly happen so that you can make that switch right.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: And Steve brought up a good point. It's a game of miles with tropical cyclones specifically because deviations in the path, the forecast track of 50 miles one way or the other, can change the, the impacts that we experience. We saw that with Debbie, with the stall that he mentioned. It happened over dry land. So that was, it actually filtered in more drier to our area than what we were anticipated to receive, and it couldn't continuously feed off of the ocean. Like Steve said, other things that we realized from time to time is we do use their forecast and we plan on a worst case scenario because we have to err on the side of caution. You know, we're making decisions with that, that track deviation in mind and knowing that those impacts could. Yeah, like with Debbie, things improved for us, but things can also go the other way. We can see, you know, conditions worsen. And we saw that in some of our areas, like Steve said, to the north of us, it was almost like some of the axis of impacts kind of shifted as the storm changed its course and whatnot. So we have the plan based off of, you know, the forecasts that we have available. We also utilize that historical data. We retain a lot of information from past events that we've experienced in Georgetown county. So we know, you know, based off of the characteristics of a storm that might have happened in the past, such as Florence, sort of thousand year flood in 2015 or Hurricane Matthew in 2016, you know, what areas do we need to pay special attention to based off of this forecast and what impacts are being predicted? So we always use that worst case scenario. That way we're erring on the side of caution.
We ensure that we have our response priorities in order and our resources designated where we feel like they're going to be needed most.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Speaking of areas of concern, we did have some changes to our evacuation zones this year. Hopefully everybody's already familiar with those.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: But just in case, yes, we did.
We took a fresh look as a partnership with the South Carolina Emergency Management division and our coastal communities along South Carolina's coast. We went in and as a part of the hurricane evacuation study update for South Carolina, every county along the coast did a revision to our evacuation zones. Our zones. We had some zones that shrink, some zones expanded. Zone a, for us, which is our primary hurricane evacuation zone, it reduced in population by 25.5%, which is great.
It allows us more flexibility, more time when pulling the trigger on an evacuation, because zone a is the zone that's most likely to evacuate. It's the closest to the ocean. We also in redoing those zones, we tried to make them more geographically identifiable. So now zone a is everything east of highway 17 towards the coast. Zone b had to pick up some area that was once zone a and kind of compensate there. So it grew in size and then zone c shrank significantly as well. All of this is done in an effort to provide the best response that we can to an emergency situation. So this allows us the opportunity to more effectively and efficiently evacuate the coast, not requiring as much evacuation time. Time is our factor that we can control in an evacuation. In most cases, in about 95% of the cases, I would say. So we can drive that evacuation based off of time. And by reducing that evacuating population, it.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Helped us, and it also helps to, I think you previously called it, alleviate the over evacuation problem.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: Over evacuation problem. Yep. It's been a thing we've dealt with for years.
We were evacuating unnecessary pockets of population. And when folks evacuate unnecessarily and don't see impacts, we build a complacency issue.
And that's a big fear of mine, is that we have a complacency issue when it comes to evacuations.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: We absolutely do.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: And that unfortunately, when you have complacency and you have a significant storm that comes along and folks don't evacuate when they're instructed to, that's usually when we experience loss of life. As Steve mentioned earlier, the fatality from Debbie in our area up in North Carolina was actually from a vehicle driving through floodwaters.
Not related to hurricane evacuation in any way, but an easy thing to avoid. We message it very strongly, turn around, don't drown. So just adhere to the guidance that we give out from the local officials and you know, it's all done in your, with your safety and interest.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: So we, we do take steps and precautions to try and keep people from taking unnecessary steps while you're planning for everything. But I mean sometimes it happens and my husband says, you know, he sand backed our garage and stuff and he says he's always happy to do a little extra work that wasn't needed because it means our area feared now.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Right. You know, I would always rather folks evacuate when we instruct them to based off of the decision and the forecast that we make and then come back home to a sunny, beautiful Georgetown that was not impacted. That means no one was hurt and nobody's property was damaged. You know, so that's, that's the best case scenario.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: So fingers crossed. The tropical storm Debbie was, you know, all that we'll see as far as tropical activity this year but we are coming in now to kind of the peak of hurricane season.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: The peak of hurricane season is actually next week. September 10 is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. Steve can elaborate more detail but it's the single most day that we're most likely statistically to have tropical cyclone activity in the atlantic basin and we hope that Debbie was it for us this year but we can't guarantee a one and done. You know, 2004 I believe it was, was a banner year for the state of Florida. They had four tropical cyclones impact the state that season. So, you know, it's not, it's not a one and done mentality where we finished with Debbie and we've wrapped up our after action meetings to what we did right, what we can improve upon and we're ready for the next one.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: So Steve, do you have any insights for us? I believe early predictions were for a busy, inactive hurricane season.
[00:34:05] Speaker D: Yeah. And you know, we had Ernesto looking at the tropical outlooks from the hurricane center. There are a couple areas of concern. As Brandon mentioned, we are heading towards the peak of hurricane season this year. Could be interesting because the heat content is way above normal and even though the climatological peak is September 10, obviously there's weeks leading up to it and weeks leading after it that form that peak. But the heat content this year it's fairly high. So I wouldn't be shocked if we have to be concerned maybe even into early November around the atlantic basin. Not saying we'll be impacted but the August 8 update for the hurricane outlook just barely tweaked the numbers. I think the May prediction was for up to 25 named storms. And they lowered a little bit, I think, up to 24 storms. So they gave a range, 18 to 24 storms or somewhere in there, surprisingly for forecasts that's issued in May and then culminates over the next several months, they're either right on with their forecast range or they're under forecast. So, I mean, I. We're due for an over forecast, and I'll gladly take an over forecast hurricane season with the number of storms we know it only takes one storm to define a hurricane season, and I'll be very happy if Debbie is the only one. But when you look at the law of averages, you know, we're just so overdue for a major hurricane, and that would be a category three, four or five. The last major hurricane really to impact Georgetown county and on the more of the fringes of it was Hugo back in 89. And we typically see a category three, four, five statistically in Georgetown County, Orey county, every 20 to 23 years. It's about 17 years up towards Cape Fear. Sticks out like a little bit more of a sore thumb up this way. But the last one even up here was Fran in 96. So you're talking about all of southeast North Carolina and all of northeast South Carolina. Just so overdue for the wind machine storm. We've had the rain ones, which obviously can be catastrophic. It's not just the safer census scale that defines what Brandon and the team in Georgetown county do, that, you know, they're looking at impact acts. That safer Simpson scale is just the one component, it's just the wind part, but we haven't had that. We haven't been challenged by that wind part in a long time. And that's kind of concerning when you look at the law of averages and wherever he exceeded our, I guess, our paycheck, basically, with respect to how much time we bought ourselves. A lot of infrastructure is in place now, a lot more population compared to back in 89.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Folks that have the one we measure everything by. But so many people who live here now, they weren't here in 1989.
They don't really have a storm to, to compare it to as far as personal experience.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: Right. And Hugo is kind of the benchmark that we use in South Carolina because as Steve mentioned, you know, 35 years ago this year, Hugo impacted the area and it was, you know, the last major hurricane to come through. Before that. I think the benchmark was Hazel, which.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: Was an October storm, 1950.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Well, you talk about the law of averages and data and numbers.
35 years between Hugo and Hazel. And here we are on the 35th anniversary this year of Hugo, so not saying anything's going to happen. Hopefully, like you said, hopefully, Debbie's the one. But, you know, and you made a good point, Steve, talking about impact based decision making. And that's what we drive our, we drive all of our decisions based off of impacts. It's not solely the category of storm. As you mentioned, the Safra Simpson scale only takes into account wind speed. It does not take into account, you know, storm surge inundation or rainfall, flooding, tornadoes, inland flooding, any of the other impacts that could impact our area. So it's much more than just, you know, category 12345.
We analyze a lot of data that comes from you guys and national hurricane center to make our decisions. And, you know, we're very grateful for the continued partnership and the support that you all provide to us.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, Steve, thank you for joining us from Wilmington. If you guys are not already following the National Weather Service Wilmington on facebook, make sure you go and do that. Make sure you're also following Brandon's page, Georgetown county emergency management, and of course the county's page, Georgetown County SC.
Steve, are there any other resources people should be, you know, keeping up with as far as the Wilmington office's predictions?
[00:38:59] Speaker D: Yeah, and I'm glad we're having this part of the discussion because there's so much misinformation that's out there before, during and after a storm.
We haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg of any AI generated misdeeds that are done regarding hurricanes. We've had to deal with a lot of rumors, a lot of information that kind of disassembles the unified message that we all want. In our partnership with emergency management, weather service and all of our partners, we need to speak with one voice, and otherwise you're going to have so many people doing so many different things that there's no control of what's going to keep people safe. So Georgetown county emergency Management, the county itself, the sheriff's office, the National Hurricane center, the local tv outlets are just phenomenal partners that are out there. The river forecast center, make sure you know where you're getting your information from because there are people that are purposefully trying to skew what you receive. And I've seen it all from what is being withheld. No one's withholding in information.
The way that information is being interpreted is also a big challenge for us. And it's got to be very careful when it comes to not just weather hazards, but any emergency I think would fit the bill here for when and where you get your information from. Just got to be very careful.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: You're right. AI makes it so easy to create false but very convincing content, especially when people are involved in an approaching emergency or in the midst of an emergency and they're looking for information. So always, please make sure you're following the county as an official source. We're always looking out for rumors and trying to dispel them, but make sure you're getting information from an official source.
Steve, what else do you want to.
[00:40:57] Speaker D: Talk to us about today as far as preparedness goes? You know, SceMD, South Carolina Emergency Management division, has phenomenal hurricane information ready. Dot Gov is another great place to get information, and I think something that's important for us to talk about. And we talked about the direct hazards and the fatalities that we see. I mean, we can't lose sight that storm surge is the greatest potential loss of life because there's so many people in these coastal areas. We don't have gills. We can't breathe in the water. Any water based hazard is a challenge for us. But when you look at statistics over the last 20 or so years, it's inland freshwater flooding where we're seeing time and time again the loss of life from these tropical systems. So that's, you know, we're evacuating, getting into safety from the storm surge areas. But that turnaround don't drown campaign, I think we have our work cut out for us. Yet you still see people taking risks that we shouldn't be for whatever reason. I kind of wish I had a secondary degree in human psychology to kind of help how I can message things. And then when we look at it, isn't this is true, and indirect fatality. So someone has been impacted, died, obviously, when looking at fatality statistics, but they occurred not from the storm directly. Like wind blew a tree down on top of them or flooding pushed them away. But the storm has come and gone, and maybe someone falls off the roof of their home trying to shore up the roof with tarp. Carbon monoxide poisoning. There's no power, but maybe a generator isn't properly ventilated, people using candles, and then it causes a structural fire. We're seeing an uptick in the number of indirect fatalities attributed to tropical systems, too. So, I mean, I know we've discussed these over the years about how can we message better so people don't have run into these pitfalls, never work alone. Outside, cardiovascular related heat, illness related issues increase, suicides increase during these times. So it's not the hurricane itself is one thing, and getting people through that event, but being there for people after the fact, too, and thinking so that we can work together as a community, you help your neighbor, help your family so that we can get through these events safely.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Yeah, there definitely are a lot of secondary hazards I was not aware of, but we do work to message those after the storm, especially the freshwater flooding, because so many people think that hurricanes are just along the coast. And if you're a certain number of miles inland, I don't need to worry about that, but obviously you really do. We've done some the motor rescues from vehicles over the years.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: I think another important indirect impact. Steve brought up Ernesto earlier. It's the storm that doesn't impact the continental United States. We saw this with Cindy a couple years ago. We saw this with Ernesto as well. As those storms pass offshore between us and Bermuda, or even further out, we see the rip current impacts as well. We're experiencing a moderate risk for rent currents today while we're recording this.
So, you know, ensuring that the public is aware of that, that, you know, Steve's office in Wilmington, they put, put out information anytime there's an elevated rip current threat in our office as well. We make sure that we put that information out so that our, not only our residents for Georgetown county, but also the numerous beachgoers that we have this time of year are aware that there's a secondary hazard that's there. You know, we may be spared from those direct impacts of that storm, but oftentimes those rip currents are, you know, significantly more dangerous as a storm passes offshore and causes that longshore current situation.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Steve, we will definitely stay in touch as we continue through hurricane season. Thank you again for everything you do. And everybody cross your fingers and hope for no more tropical activity this year.
[00:45:04] Speaker C: All right, thank you. Thanks, Steve.
[00:45:06] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:45:08] Speaker E: Thank you.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Our final guest today is Lieutenant Chris Gino with the Georgetown county sheriff's office. And Lieutenant Gino, you are here today to talk about a new accreditation that the sheriff's office has received from Calea. A very prestigious accreditation, I believe. Tell me a little bit about this.
[00:45:27] Speaker E: Calea is the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies. It's a program we started just over three years ago where we are giving a set of stringent standards.
And in order to get the award from Calea, we've got to meet those standards. And it starts with going over policy, making sure our policies meet the standards.
Once that's done, they'll do an online mock assessment, check the standards, see if there's any issues. We had none. From there, they're going to actually come to the agency and make sure that we are meeting the standards by doing the things that we're supposed to be doing. We do several analysis, a lot of inspections and evidence and vehicle inspections. But really, overall, it's just a. It's just a really high bar that they set. And in order to meet all those it takes, it's a team effort.
Everybody does what they need to do. They come down and we get awarded.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Okay, so were you in charge of this process?
[00:46:34] Speaker E: I am. I'm the accreditation manager at the sheriff's office. I took over that position just short of a year ago.
And thankfully, like I said, it's a team thing, and we got a great team, so it made my job pretty easy.
We are. I know we just got the Kalia award, which will be good for four years, but we have to meet the same standard every year. We just don't have an on site until year four.
But along with Calea, we are also. We've been a state accredited agency for just over 15 years. So now we are one of six agencies in the state of South Carolina that is actually dual accredited, state and national accreditation.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: That is wonderful. So it sounds like it was certainly a very involved process. How long were you guys working on the accreditation process?
[00:47:24] Speaker E: The accreditation, like I said, it starts. It's a four year cycle now. We had the policies in place, but their standards are a little different than the state standards. So some of the policies needed to be tweaked for the better. And it could just be a one word change or there's, you know, other changes. Could have been almost the entire document. We'd have to go through and revamp it and just make sure that we're meeting the. I don't want to call it standardization, you know, industry standards, because, like I said, it really does set the bar high to set you apart from other agencies. But once you have all your policies in place, which we did because of the state accreditation, we tweaked a few of them to meet the standards, but we have to do what's called proofs for each standard. There's 247 standards, I believe. So we had to prove with documents that we are meeting those. And it could be. It could be photographs, it could be incident reports, analysis stats. It's just a ton of different things that we could submit to them so they could see that we're actually meeting those standards.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: So more than just a certificate on the wall that says you're accredited. For residents, the average citizen, this means that it's an assurance that their law enforcement agency is being held to the highest standards.
[00:48:42] Speaker E: It is, you know, other than the certificate, there's a lot of different benefits that go along with it, you know, especially with the community. You get community buy in, which is huge for Sheriff Weaver because he's all about the community, which, you know, is great. So you have the community buy in. You have buy in from community leaders, the county council, the troops at the sheriff's office. You know, they're excited about the award. Like I said, you know, we're one of six agencies in the state to be dual accredited. And where there's only, I think it was 7% of law enforcement agencies in the nation are Calea accredited. So it's a huge thing.
And, you know, at the sheriff's office, from the top down, like I mentioned at the county council meeting, it's everybody's accountable for their actions and their jobs. So everybody's held to that standard and which just makes the agency overall not only a good place to work, but very professional, the accreditation, you know, holding those standards as high as they do. We also, you know, it limits like civil liability if somebody was to get sued. It makes it a lot harder to do that because we're following the policies. So frivolous lawsuits don't tend to happen.
And it also, I think it can bring down insurance rates for not, you know, medical insurance, but insurance liability rates for the county as well.
[00:50:06] Speaker A: So for the average resident, that is a savings and county funds, which would be always appreciate. So speaking of community buy in, I know that deputies with the sheriff's office love to get out and talk to residents. And I believe we have some opportunities to interact with members of the public coming up. Can you tell me about those?
[00:50:24] Speaker E: We do actually this fall, we got quite a bit of things coming up actually on the 1 October we're partnering with the city police department for National Night out, which is a big event. There's going to be a food vendors, things for kids to do. It's a great time for everybody to get together with their local law enforcement and meet the people who are out there on the street every day.
This is going to be at the Beck center here in Georgetown later this fall. In October, we are bringing back coffee with a cop. I'm unsure of the date, but if you just pay attention to our facebook page that'll be posted and make sure you come out and see us then.
Citizens Academy also starts again this fall, which is, it's held every Tuesday evening in October and it gives citizens a chance to come out, see what we do behind the scenes, the inner workings of the sheriff's office, and actually participate in a lot of things that deputies do from day to day. So that's, that's a good time. We do need people to sign up and they can do so just contact the sheriff's office and fill out the information and come out and see us for that too. So we got a lot of stuff going on this fall and that that's just a small amount of things we're doing, and I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting about. But if everybody follows our Facebook page, we post everything on there and they'll be able to keep up with everything that we have going on.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: So that's the Georgetown county sheriff's office on Facebook. I believe your phone number is 843-546-5101 is the non emergency line.
[00:51:53] Speaker E: Yes, ma'am.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: And then you have a website that's external from our regular website, gc sheriff.org dot.
So plenty of ways to get in touch with the sheriff's office.
I have seen some bits and pieces of that citizens academy. It is a lot of fun. So if you have time, definitely sign up for that and learn more about what our law enforcement officers are doing. Lieutenant Gino, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:52:18] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:52:19] Speaker E: It was a pleasure.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: And thank you for everything that you.
[00:52:22] Speaker E: Guys do for our yes ma'am and thank you.
[00:52:25] Speaker F: That's it for first Friday with Georgetown county. Thank you for listening. Before we go, we'd like to share a few dates with you. Applications for Georgetown county accommodations tax grants are open and will remain open through October 4 at 05:00 p.m.
find more
[email protected]. atenc Georgetown County Council is back to meeting twice a month for the fall. Their next meeting will be September 10, followed by a second monthly meeting on September 24. Find agendas and more
[email protected]. council residents interested in learning more about proposed sales taxes that will be on the ballot this November have several upcoming opportunities. A public information meeting will take place at Andrews Elementary School on September 17 from 530 to 07:00 p.m.
there will also be multiple opportunities coming up in October, including a meeting that will be live streamed. You can find more information about the sales tax initiatives and those upcoming
[email protected].
taxes once more thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next month.
