When William Marshall awoke Sunday morning in Cayce’s Riverland Park neighborhood, he checked on how high the Congaree River that runs by the neighborhood was getting, knowing that water making its way down from the Upstate and western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene would be causing it to rise.
“Realized how far the water had came just overnight, I knew that this was gonna be a little bit different,” he said.
Marshall is a chef at beloved Cayce hole in the wall The Kingsman, where he has worked for 22 years. He grew up in low-lying Riverland Park, living there for 16 years in his youth, and returning to live there about four years ago. He and many of the other residents there, which he described as “lifers,” know that the neighborhood is one of the first areas to flood when the river rises.
So Marshall leaped into action.
“I went and dusted my kayak off, got my canoe out and all that stuff, and put it in the front yard,” he said.
The Congaree River crested Monday at about 30.5 feet, and like it did in 2015 when the river crested nearly a foot and a half higher, Riverland Park flooded. As of Tuesday evening, the city put the number of homes that flooded at fewer than than 12. No injuries have been reported.
Marshall was there to help. He did home checks for landlords and was on hand when the city rescued one family from a house where the water reached waist-high inside. And he brought people food and other supplies, driving out from his home on higher ground and paddling out to those who were stuck.
For one neighbor, that included a 12-pack of Busch Light.
“His meemaw been down there since, I guess, the 70s, and he stays down with her,” Marshall said. “I saw one of his posts, like, ‘This water’s getting to me, I didn’t think it was gonna be this bad. I’m down here by myself. I need a beer, damn it.’ I was like, ‘What kind of beer? I’m on it.’”
“Regardless of beer, diapers or whatever it was,” he added, “I was just going to put my foot forward and help.”
Time to clean up
The Congaree has been receding since Monday afternoon, dipping out of flood stage late Tuesday afternoon. But the clean-up in Cayce will continue for a while.
The nearby Thomas Newman boat landing was fully underwater as was the entirety of the riverwalks in Cayce and West Columbia. Along Old State Road heading out of Riverland Park, which connects to the landing and the riverwalk and Timmerman Trail, the water tore up stretches of asphalt, meaning it will likely be closed for some time.
“Our Parks Department’s gonna be very busy,” said Jim Crosland, Cayce’s interim city manager. “Usually, it’s certain portions only that the riverwalk floods, usually it takes us two or three days. I think we’re gonna be out at least a week and a half, two weeks, just trying to get all the mud and debris out of there.”
“Our other concern is to check all those houses that did have water coming into the crawl spaces to make sure there’s no mold, stuff like that,” he added.
West Columbia didn’t see residential impacts like Cayce, but it’s also looking at a laborious process to get its riverwalk back up and running.
The Rhythm on the River concert series that makes use of the amphitheater attached to the riverwalk at the Gervais Street Bridge postponed its first event for the fall, scheduled for Friday, instead doing back-to-back concerts next Friday and Saturday to ensure there’s time to get the venue ready.
Cayce is looking to bolster morale Saturday by carrying on with its annual Fall Fest at Granby Gardens Park.
“We’ve added a canned good donation so that we can help anybody who needs it,” Cayce Mayor Elise partin said. “But we felt like it was important to come together as a community.”
Could have been worse
Cayce initiated a voluntary evacuation Sunday, going door to door to put Riverland Park residents on alert that the river was rising.
City officials waited to see whether Lake Murray would have to open an additional spill gate after the one it opened Friday, sending more water down the Saluda River, which links up with the Broad River in Columbia to form the Congaree. That didn’t come to pass, but Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stanger described it as a “tight call.”
“I started conversations two days prior to the hurricane,” Partin said of the city’s communication with Dominion Energy, which operates the Lake Murray Dam. “Because that’s how that should be looked at — if there’s something that needs to be released, it needs to be released before the storm comes. So thankfully, what we know is they did go up, but they didn’t go much, and our biggest problem was from the Broad.”
The water got high enough in Riverland Park to strand some people in their homes, and the city conducted several rescues, using both boats and a high-water truck.
With the water gone from the neighborhood, Marshall said the residents are pulling together as they always do to help each other get back to normal.
“There’s a lot of people that came by to use my kayak to go check on their homes, the ones that did evacuate,” he said. “A couple neighbors on the back street, they came by my house and exchanged numbers for me to update them if anything changes, if they can get back to their homes. It’s just a real strong bond.”
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