Charleston implements emergency curfew as the city prepares for severe flooding
With potential feet of rain in the forecast from Debby, the city of Charleston is taking action to help keep people safe through extreme overnight rainfall.
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00:00Charleston, South Carolina, where officials are warning people in flood-prone areas to get out this evening or stay put through the entire storm.
00:10AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is there live tonight and they're warning people to prepare for potentially historic and catastrophic flooding.
00:16Bill, I know that you were at a press conference there. Now you're right up against the shoreline. I see some pumps running.
00:21So what's going on where you are?
00:25Yeah, Jeff, we just spoke with emergency officials and the mayor within the past hour.
00:29They are warning people here in Charleston, South Carolina, take this storm seriously.
00:34Debbie, it could produce life-threatening, potentially catastrophic flooding here in the low country of South Carolina over the next 24 hours.
00:42Officials just confirmed an emergency curfew here in the peninsula of Charleston.
00:47If you look at a map or people who are familiar, they know the city of Charleston is surrounded by water.
00:52They don't want anyone on the roads after 11 o'clock tonight.
00:55They believe there could be a foot or more of rainfall from midnight through tomorrow morning into the afternoon.
01:02So they say it's going to be incredibly dangerous here after dark.
01:05Again, an emergency curfew here in the peninsula of Charleston starting at 11 o'clock tonight.
01:10You could hear it and you could see it. We have these pumps here.
01:13They already have those big hoses into the storm drains.
01:16What they've been doing is lowering lake levels and also just trying to get all of the extra water already in the storm drains out.
01:23And all of that water here is being dumped and pumped right into the bay.
01:27But again, it is going to be a struggle to keep up with all of the rain that we are expecting from Debbie over the next 24 hours.
01:34When you look at the video, you can hear and see pumps running all across Charleston.
01:39And again, what they're doing, not just clearing the storm drains, but also they're trying to lower lake levels to prevent more flooding issues.
01:47They say the drainage system here likely will not be able to keep up with rainfall rates of two to three inches of rain an hour or more for eight hours or more.
01:58And again, we're seeing more sandbags going up in front of homes and businesses in Charleston as well.
02:03Families have been out with their own shovels in the rain today, filling up their sandbags at distribution sites.
02:09We were just told more than 49,000 sandbags have been distributed across Charleston in the past two days.
02:15Mayor William Cogswell just told us the people need to be prepared for extremely dangerous, potentially historic flooding here in Charleston starting after dark tonight, lasting well into tomorrow.
02:29Stay indoors and do not travel. If you need to get off the peninsula, we urge you to do that now.
02:36If you live on the peninsula, please shelter in place.
02:40We will have emergency vehicles, high water vehicles located at all eight arteries in and out of the city for emergency purposes only.
02:52The mayor is urging people in low lying flood prone areas who are worried that they may get stranded during this storm to get out tonight before dark and to head to higher ground while it's still safe.
03:06Now, parking garages have been open for free across the city.
03:09So people have an opportunity to get their cars off of flood prone streets and up to higher ground elevated surface.
03:15But we're being told many of those parking garages are filling up quickly.
03:20So again, Jeff, we have an emergency curfew that's going to be starting here in the peninsula of Charleston at 11 o'clock tonight.
03:27The hurricane tracker on the AccuWeather app, incredibly useful, breaking this down hour by hour.
03:33And it's clear we're looking at more than a foot, potentially more than two feet of rainfall here in Charleston.
03:40Jeff, 30 inches of rain or more is not out of the question.
03:43So we're talking about tremendous amounts of rain, life threatening flooding.
03:47People still have a few hours to prepare or get out while it's still light out.
03:51And Bill, you mentioned that hurricane tracker.
03:53It's a great feature on the app.
03:54When you bring it up for your location or if you maybe are just curious and you type Savannah or Charleston, Myrtle Beach, you'll see a little hurricane icon on the top.
04:02You click on that and that will kind of change the format of the way the AccuWeather forecast is presented to you.
04:09And it will show you the top wind speed, the hours of greatest impact and the expected rainfall range.
04:16Just similar to the way that the winter cast feature shows you the percentage likelihoods of different ranges of rainfall amounts.
04:25And there's some big numbers, 12 to 18, 18 to 24 inches for some of you in our forecast.