Listen Live
Praise Baltimore Listen Live
Praise Featured Video
CLOSE
SC Flooding

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

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 10 dams have breached or failed in South Carolina since Saturday, Gov. Nikki Haley and the state’s emergency management agency said. The structural integrity of other dams was being monitored.

One failure, of the Overcreek dam in Richland County’s Forest Acres, sent a torrent of floodwater raging downstream and forced evacuations near Columbia.

She added that 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, at least 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.

Haley said there had been 175 water rescues so far, and more than 800 people were temporarily housed in shelters.

More than 70 miles of Interstate 95 in the state remained closed, with five to eight bridges still awaiting structural checks, she 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.

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

Pray for South Carolina: Flooding Continues to Cause Major Problems and the Death Toll has risen to 14  was originally published on praisedc.com