Horry County Emergency Operations Center holds activation training

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — The Horry County Emergency Operations Center conducted activation training Thursday in preparation for a disaster.

The annual exercise was scheduled before Tropical Storm Debby hit the Grand Strand earlier this month. Horry County Emergency Management officials said having all state and federal partners present in one place makes things easier and safer for the community.

Director Sam Hodge said decision-makers from each agency attended the training.

“If there’s a road closure, you could walk across the aisle and talk to the South Carolina Department of Transportation and vice versa,” he said. “So, these trainings make for good networking and partnership building. So, when the storm comes, we’re ready to handle it.”

Senior emergency management leaders shared their goals and objectives for disasters.

“Nonprofits are here, our utilities, our public safety, they all come together, and we sit in one room, and we solve the problem,” Hodge said.

The EOC has eight tables, each seating up to eight people. Every agency has its own colored vests. Hodge said those wearing red vests cover logistics, while green vests represent operations and black vests emergency management staff and public information officials.

Hodge shared their biggest challenge in the training.

“We see a lot of complacency when it comes to evacuations,” he said. “Even though [Hurricane] Florence was a big storm, which was probably our biggest evacuation that we’ve done in Horry County, these little storms like Debby and the things we ramp up for, we see complacency.”

Hodge said Debby didn’t give the county too much of a problem when the storm came through.

“It was more so the river flooding that came afterward, which the county is familiar with,” he said. “Horry County is a tremendously growing area, and so maybe people aren’t used to evacuations or an evacuation order process. My fear is we’re going to request an evacuation order from the governor’s office, put it in place, and people not adhere to that evacuation order because they’re not prepared.”

There are three operational conditions called OPCON 1, 2 and 3.

OPCON 3 means everything is operating under normal conditions; OPCON 1, the highest level, means the EOC is activated.

During OPCON 1, Hodge said checkpoints are set up and evacuation routes and shelters are opened. During Debby, the EOC was operating at OPCON 1 for six days.

The peak hurricane season runs from late August to early October, with the peak midpoint being Sept. 10.

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Jackie LiBrizzi is a multimedia journalist at News13. Jackie is originally from Hamilton, New Jersey, and was raised in Piedmont, South Carolina. Jackie joined the News13 team in June 2023 after she graduated as a student-athlete from the University of South Carolina in May 2023. Follow Jackie on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook , or Instagram , and read more of her work he r e .

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