THE MODELS WERE WRONG-'We Were Not Ready'

(TNS) - Hurricane Matthew — a storm that toppled trees, dumped up to eight inches of rain and left thousands without power, caught Scotland, N.C. officials and residents by surprise.

Scotland County Manager Kevin Patterson said forecasts that the Category 1 storm would veer and avoid the Sandhills region were incorrect.

“The vast amount of models for Hurricane Matthew were proven wrong,” Patterson said. “We have learned a lot from this storm.”

While the majority of county residents were without power to begin the week, the city of Laurinburg saw its power restored in the early morning hours on Monday.

“There were over 6,000 homes without power in the city,” said City Manager Charles Nichols. “The main problem was Duke Energy’s transmission lines were down which had no power going into our cities substation — that was out of our control.

Across the county, there were about 3,974 Duke Energy customers without power and another 1,664 Lumber River Electric Membership customers were in the dark.

Patterson said it may take several days to restore power everywhere.

“We should have power back to the vast majority of Scotland County residents by the end of the week,” Patterson said. “When looking at storm debris, it will be a long time before all the limbs are cleaned up.”

St. Andrews University saw a foot of water flood the Morgan Jones Science building Saturday, as well as a few inches of water in the universities cafeteria.

Scotland County was still under flood warning until 10:30 pm Monday according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.

“We had about a foot of standing water in Morgan Jones and we started cleaning it up Sunday morning,” said Craig Dean, who works maintenance at St. Andrews University. “We are probably going to have to rip out all of the carpet,” he said.

“We did not see this coming,” said Tim Verhey, St. Andrews Dean of Students.

Laurinburg resident Paula Grubbs was at the Laundry Express on Monday afternoon washing clothes because her home, in one of the subdivisions behind the John Blue House, was still without power.

“I knew it was going to be more than rain, but I didn’t expect this,” she said. “No one is ever really prepared because you don’t think it’s going to hit or be as bad as they predict.”

The university bookstore was also broken into over the weekend, according to Verhey.

“The book store was broken into — not much was stolen,” Verhey said.

St. Andrews will reopen on Wednesday. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke cancelled classes through Wednesday. Scotland County schools officials decided to cancel classes on Monday, but expected to reopen this morning.

City and county offices were also closed on Monday.

Much of the eastern part of the state is dealing with devastating flooding as rivers top their banks.

In neighboring Robeson County, 1,000 people had to be rescued, some in dramatic helicopter operations, while 3,000 people are still living in shelters, authorities said Sunday. Statewide more than 585,00 customers still lacked electricity Sunday night.

“Hurricane Matthew may be off the map, but it is still with us,” North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said Sunday.

Matthew killed at least 17 people in four states — seven in North Carolina, four in Florida, three in Georgia and three in South Carolina, authorities said.

Reach Nolan Gilmour at 910-506-3171

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