COLUMBIA, S.C.—The family of Miss South Carolina 1954 found her flood-soaked pageant scrapbook on a dining room floor littered with dead fish on Tuesday, as the first sunny day in nearly two weeks provided a chance to clean up from historic floods.
“I would hate for her to see it like this. She would be crushed,” said Polly Sim, who moved her 80-year-old mother into a nursing home just before the rainstorm turned much of the state into a disaster area.
Owners of inundated homes were keeping close watch on swollen waterways as they pried open swollen doors and tore out soaked carpets. So far, at least 17 people have died in the floods in the Carolinas, some of them drowning after trying to drive through high water.
Sim’s mother, known as Polly Rankin Suber when she competed in the Miss America contest, had lived since 1972 in the unit, where more than 3 feet of muddy water toppled her washing machine and turned the wallboard to mush.
“There’s no way it will be what it was,” said Sim. “My mom was so eccentric, had her own funky style of decorating, there’s no way anyone could duplicate that. Never.”
Treading Carefully
Tuesday was the first dry day since Sept. 24 in South Carolina’s state capital, where a midnight-to-6 a.m. curfew was in effect. But officials warned that new evacuations could come as the huge mass of water flows toward the sea, threatening dams and displacing residents along the way.
Of particular concern was the Lowcountry, where the Santee, Edisto, and other rivers make their way to the sea. Gov. Nikki Haley warned that several rivers were rising and had yet to reach their peaks.
