BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – South Carolina, especially Myrtle Beach is a big vacation destination for Western New Yorkers.
News 4 is hearing from Western New York natives who are in South Carolina riding out Hurricane Ian, which has now weakened into a post-tropical cyclone.
“They’re still calling for 2-3 inches of rain and when you get that deluge like that over a short period of time there are some flood warnings that are out there,” said John Daniel, a Brockport native.
Flooding is a concern for Western New York natives we heard from living away from the South Carolina coast. Daniel and his friend, Mike Newsom who’s from the City of Tonawanda run a Bills Backers bar in Greenville, South Carolina at Eastside Bar and Grill. They say people are retreating from the Carolina coast.
“There’s a lot of people that live on the coast that come inland when these kind of events happen, so within the last 24 hours it seems that there’s more and more people coming up in here. The Interstates, they’re not slammed by any means just yet but there’s a high volume of traffic coming into the area right now,” Daniel said.
Mike Duganier, who’s from Elba, Genesee County runs several restaurants in Columbia, South Carolina. Flooding is a concern there as well.
“Different neighborhoods offered sandbags out to different restaurants that we’re utilizing for you know just in case I’ve heard more than normal sirens going off this morning,” Duganier said.
Meanwhile, flights from Florida to Buffalo were back on schedule Friday. Mary Kitchen of Fort Myers, evacuated with her two children and came to Buffalo to see friends. She says her husband stayed behind to cleanup.. in a city that’s been devastated by Ian.
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“I know all of downtown is just under water and our area thankfully did okay, there’s just a lot of downed trees you could hardly drive through the neighborhood, there are just trees everywhere,” Kitchen said.
FEMA continues to assess the damage in Florida and conduct search and rescue efforts.
“Downtown is flooded beyond belief, I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s very sad and it appears destroyed, if you know Naples, you know the pier and beautiful beaches that are now all up in arms now a lot of devastation there for sure,” said Liam Fisher a Naples resident.
Jeff Preval is an award-winning anchor and reporter who joined the News 4 team in December 2021. See more of his work here.