South Carolina Flooding: Dams Breached, More Trouble Ahead

(CNN) — The rain may have stopped, but South Carolina is grappling with a host of new concerns: Dam breaks. Billions of dollars in damage. And rivers that still haven’t crested yet.

Here’s the latest on the mammoth flooding tormenting the region:

Dam breaks
At least nine dams have breached or failed in South Carolina since Saturday, the state’s emergency management agency said early Tuesday.
One failure, of the Overcreek dam in Richland County’s Forest Acres, sent a torrent of floodwater raging downstream and forced evacuations near Columbia.

Officials allowed water to breach at least one other dam, also in Richland County. Officials conduct these controlled breaches “to prevent a much larger incident and a much larger amount of water escaping from the dam,” emergency management spokesman Derrec Becker said.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said more evacuations are likely as flood waters rise in some places.

Death toll rises
So far, at least 14 people have died in weather-related incidents: 12 in South Carolina and two in North Carolina.

In South Carolina, seven people drowned and four died in traffic accidents, the state’s department of public safety said.

North Carolina reported two deaths from traffic accidents, in Cumberland and Jackson counties, a state emergency management spokeswoman said.

Caskets float away
Of all the items that have drifted away in the flooding, perhaps none was more unexpected than a casket unearthed from a South Carolina cemetery.

Pastor Wayne Reeves of New Life Ministries in Summerville was in the middle of an interview when he saw the casket float away.

So he headed into the waist-deep floodwater to retrieve it.

“That’s somebody’s family out there,” he told CNN affiliate WCBD. “That’s (a) family suffering. That’s their family there that popped up from under the ground. And I think it’s the human thing to do.”

The casket, still adorned with white and pink flowers, carried the remains of a woman buried in May, WCBD said. Another casket, that of the woman’s husband, also drifted away but was later recovered by Dorchester County sheriff’s officials.

As it turned out, the woman’s family was watching nearby as Reeves went into the water.

“This family don’t want to sit on the edge of this road all night long watching their family members bob in the water like that,” the pastor told WCBD.

“If that was my mom or my dad, I’d walk through hell and high water. And today it happened to be high water.”

Apartments get looted
Some Columbia residents left their homes as victims of flooding. They returned to find their homes looted.

On Sunday, an apparent dam breach led to the flooding of the Willow Creek Apartments, property manager Heather Lovell told CNN affiliate WACH.

So rescue crews in boats came to the complex and helped residents to safety.

On Monday, Pamela Courts returned to her apartment and found not just flood damage, but signs of theft.

“Overnight, we had a break-in, so whatever was upstairs they came and took: TVs jewelry, everything,” she told WACH.

Resident Juamaame Evins told the affiliate he was trying to stay positive despite the back-to-back hardships.

“Even though we lost everything and stuff got stolen, we can rebuild together and help each other and be each other’s backbones and carry each other through this time because we need each other,” he said.

Rivers still rising
The flooding is far from over. Rivers might not crest for another two weeks, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

And the mayor of Columbia, who has said he believes damage “will probably be in the billions of dollars,” is bracing for more trouble.

“We aren’t close to being out of the woods,” Mayor Steve Benjamin said Tuesday morning, adding that even more dams in the area could be in danger of breaking or being topped by water. “We still expect the water to start coming down from the upstate, coming downhill to the midlands.”

At least there was no more rain to add.

“The sun is out. … We haven’t seen the sun in several days. Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come,” Benjamin said.

The situation is the result of a weather system that funneled tropical moisture into South Carolina last week and refused to move on, Myers said.

“It was a garden hose that just kept pouring ashore in one spot, and that spot was South Carolina,” he said.

State officials described it as a 1,000-year storm — referring to weather terminology describing a storm with a 1-in-1,000 chance of happening in any given year.