HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – Flooding after Hurricane Florence cut off access to one rural community for almost a week.
The community of Dongola, which is about ten miles west of Conway, is on the Little Pee Dee River.
Pawleys Swamp is still flooding several roads and that has paralyzed this small community.
“We ain’t been able to get out or go nowhere, unless you got somebody that’s got a four-wheel-drive truck that sits way high up off the ground,” said Dewey Cox, who lives in the Dongola community.
Cox lives in a mobile home park near Dongola, which flood as the Little Pee Dee River went over its banks after Hurricane Florence.
Cox says he never lost power during the storm, but has been stuck since Sunday.
“My home’s been dry, but all around me, I couldn’t get out until just now,” Cox said.
With more than three feet of water on parts of the Pee Dee Highway and Punch Bowl Landing Road, there was no access to Dongola.
Residents like Cox say they saw almost no emergency crews monitoring the area.
“This place doesn’t matter, I guess,” Cox said. “It ain’t as important as Conway in town and all that. They got more things to do up there than down here.”
Cox says the roughly 50 people who stayed in Dongola through the floods stayed safe, but he hopes his community isn’t forgotten again.
“Next time there’s a flood or something, maybe they might come down here and think about us or something,” he said.
The nearest National Weather Service gauge upstream on the Little Pee Dee River from Dongola is at the Marion County border off U.S. Highway 378.
The water level there has only dropped about two feet since the Little Pee Dee crested on Tuesday.
