Charleston County will go to Opcon 3 at 3 p.m., which is to say they have opened the citizen information phone lines (202-7100) and they’ll be coordinating this afternoon with the organizations that would man hurricane shelters. The county’s storm HQ will go to 24 hours beginning Wednesday morning and some evacuation announcements could come by tomorrow evening.
While evacuations have failed before, Charleston County’s preparedness is like a well-oiled machine. The variable in all of this is exactly where Hanna is going to go.
“There still is a lot of uncertainty with this storm,” says Cathy Haynes, the director of the county’s Emergency Preparedness Division. “It’s hard to make decisions that we need to make.”
The 2 p.m. update from the National Weather Service changed little in the storm’s predicted path. They’re still expecting Hanna to hug the coast before making landfall in or around Charleston, potentially as a weak Category 1. But there’s also the potential for the storm to make a more substantial landfall in Florida, seriously downgrading its Lowcountry impact. Or it could hang farther off the coast, making for a stronger storm when/if it makes it our way.
“Residents need to be monitoring the situation,” Haynes says.
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