S.C. officials revise hurricane plans

COLUMBIA - Some emergency workers along the South Carolina coast are tweaking hurricane-preparedness plans in the wake of Gulf Coast storms Katrina and Rita.

Officials are looking into whether there are enough boats to rescue people potentially stranded by floodwaters and at whether there is sufficient shelter space. The evacuation of nursing homes also has raised some concern.

State officials called dozens of nursing homes in coastal counties last month as Hurricane Ophelia approached.

But at least one in Horry County couldn't move some of the state's most vulnerable people to a local hospital because it already was near capacity.

Every nursing home must file an evacuation plan with the state before it can get an operating license.

But state officials have no control over which ambulance or bus services the nursing homes contract with or whether those companies can handle a large number of evacuees.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control said it took five nursing homes to court in 1999 for failing to evacuate residents before Hurricane Floyd sideswiped the state.

"We encourage the homes to have backup plans aside from what the regulations say they must have," said Jerry Paul, the director DHEC's health facilities preparation division.

The area nursing home manager for Epic Group, which has facilities in Mount Pleasant, Conway and Beaufort, has contracts with inland ambulance services that don't have other nursing home clients.

"We contract with an ambulance service, a bus service. We have contracts for supplies, contracts with hotels," Carolyn Davidson said. "We have to do rather extensive planning."

Some Beaufort County officials who helped with rescue efforts in Louisiana are worried about flooding.

Burton Fire District Chief Harry Rountree said he recently went over county flood prediction maps.

"We always had been under the assumption that some of our five fire stations would survive," Chief Rountree said. "Now we're putting together a plan how we do our job if all five of my stations are wiped out."

Cathy Haynes, the deputy director of the Charleston County Emergency Preparedness Department, said officials are learning from the mistakes and misfortunes along the Gulf Coast.