Nichols residents nervous watching rivers rise | Hurricane Wire

“I’m a simple person,” he said. “It doesn’t cost me as much to stay alive.”

As the last remnants of Debby’s rains fell this week, the small town was mostly quiet. A woman pushed a stroller across a basketball court. An old, tri-colored hound wandered across the main drag, Mullins Street.

Most of the day’s activity came from the flood response. SC Highway Patrol troopers, local police and state wildlife agents shuffled in the parking lot beside the one-story, brick building housing town hall, the library and the police station. On a wall inside hangs a collection of photos and framed articles chronicling previous floods.

Forecasts call for both the Little Pee Dee and the Lumber rivers to spill their banks. That doesn’t mean the same devastation is in store as from previous storms, though. Florence flooded every business, church and home in town.

This time, projections aren’t that high, even though flooding is expected along several streets, according to the latest from the National Weather Service. The agency also predicts 30 to 40 nearby homes could be flooded or isolated.

If the forecast were more dire, town officials said evacuations would be underway. Still, leaders have asked residents to gather their medicines together and get sandbags ready just in case projections increase.

“It’s still looking OK,” Major Lawson Battle said. “Right now, the biggest thing is all these citizens’ safety. And if I had the slightest doubt — that something was going to be happening pretty soon — we wouldn’t be here right now. We’d be going door to door. …

“Not saying we know everything to do, but after two of them you learn.”

Most downtown Nichols businesses are boarded up, having shuttered long ago. It’s hard to imagine this place once had a thriving bank, doctor’s office and pharmacy. Some residents moved away after the previous floods. Before Hurricane Matthew eight years ago, the town had 22 businesses. Now there are just over a dozen.