The city of Charleston remains at OPCON 1, with the Municipal Emergency Operations Center fully activated, and strongly encourages residents to remain off the roads due to continuing hazardous conditions expected throughout the day today.
Charleston City Council will hold a telephonic meeting at 1:30 p.m. today to discuss updates related to Hurricane Dorian and its impacts to the Charleston area. The dial-in number for the meeting is 1-800-747-5150 and the access code is 5777434.
As of 12 p.m. today, 148 trees and 36 power lines and cables were reported down, with 108 total road closures in effect, 26 of which were due to flooding.
To help with the city’s assessments, citizens are asked to continue to report damage at www.charleston-sc.gov/report-damage or by calling the city of Charleston Citizen Information Line at 843-973-7219.
According to information from the National Weather Service, “Torrential rainfall will combine with storm surge inundation to create life-threatening flash flooding along the SC coast, including downtown Charleston. Rainfall amounts of 7 to 15 inches are expected across the Flash Flood Watch area today, and localized amounts could reach 20 inches in the Charleston Tri-County region. Flooding will create dangerous travel conditions.”
Additionally, “Hurricane force wind gusts are expected near the SE SC coast, and tropical storm force winds/gusts will continue across the Tropical Storm Warning area.”
City offices and facilities will remain closed tomorrow, Friday, September 6, and residential garbage and trash collection is suspended through the weekend.
In the meantime, signal recovery and initial debris clearing crews are prepared for deployment throughout the city to address signal outages and downed trees, as conditions allow.
Damage assessment teams have been mobilized and are ready to be deployed to identify impacted areas and document storm-related damage.
For additional information related to the storm, residents can call the Citizen Services Desk at 843-724-7311 or review the city’s Hurricane Information webpage: http://www.charleston-sc.gov/hurricane-information.
For the most accurate and up-to-date weather forecasts, residents should stay tuned to the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service Charleston websites, as well as local media. Additional hurricane preparedness information can be found at www.scemd.org.