Their home flooded in 2015 so they built a new one. Then came Hurricane Matthew.
Residents along the
Although some houses are still being repaired from last October only to face more repairs today, several residents felt a little more ready to accept the river's assault this year.
Three strikes, however, and some may be out.
"I'm thinking if it does it again, we're going to have to consider selling this thing because that's a little bit much," said
Elisia and
"We didn't have insurance on it yet because we were just moving in," she said. "We got beds in, couch in, flooded. ... There was almost 4 feet of water in that house."
They tore the house down and built a new one finishing a lot of the work themselves, she said. They moved in on
"We had boxes in here. I mean, we had just moved in and we started watching the news and we were like, 'you have GOT to be kidding,'"
Hurricane Matthew was on its way. The Ouellettes left just before it arrived and returned on
"It was still standing like the arc that it is. It was like, 'hey check me out I'm still here,'"
When the Ouellettes built their new home, the contractor raised the lot level two feet higher than the road and put the new structure on 12-foot-tall stilts. The Ouellettes were glad they did that.
"By the time we got back on Sunday (
They grabbed a boat and settled in as the river continued to rise.
"The water, it just kept coming and coming and coming and by the time it got to where it stopped rising, it was over my head in the road,"
The flood waters lapped at the stilts about five feet under their home. But this time it wasn't coming in to wreak the havoc it did last October.
"October is my favorite month and it's just been ruined -- two years in a row now," she said. But the Ouellettes stayed high and dry this year.
"I still see people who are still working on stuff from last year's flood and I'm like, 'you know what? We did good,'" she said.
Jenny and
The water was still up to their knees when they returned,
She and her husband were tearing out the cabinets from an outbuilding that was hit by flood waters for a second year in a row on Thursday. Their house on stilts remained unharmed, but the low-lying outbuildings in their yard and throughout the neighborhood were showing they had, had enough.
The Todds are building a new house on drier land -- away from the river -- in another part of the county.
About a mile up river from
Johnson has lived on the
The flood water, this time, reached the top of his boathouse behind The Clemson House on
The Clemson House and his own home on
Johnson was about knee-deep in that water from the swollen river on Thursday working on the wiring of a zapped boatlift in his boathouse as his grandson pressure-washed the mud from the driveway.
Johnson has a pacemaker and his daughter fussed at him for being in the water working with electricity. But the strong survivor of the river's occasional wrath knows what to do to get his house in order and the boatlift working again -- flood water or not. The boatlift's control switch stopped working in the flood. He bypassed the wires to another switch and soon the hum of a motor roared to life. The boatlift was working again.
His daughter pulled a rope of a floating jet-ski into the harnesses as Johnson lifted the craft to security. Another potential problem solved.
The
The river floods. History has taught them that. But the floods will pass and life goes on. History has shown that too. And with a little pressure-washing, cleaning, renovating and sturdy homes -- sturdy like the residents who dwell inside them -- life continues on the river.
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