Columbia welcomes thousands fleeing storm

Irma is the hurricane that convinced Erica Adams to flee her Parkland, Fla., home instead of riding out the storm as she had done with two other hurricanes.

“This is the one that seems way worse,” Adams said Friday as she, her relatives and friends window-shopped in Columbia’s Vista. “I just looked at what was coming and was ready to leave.”

Adams is among scores of Floridians making the Columbia area their home away from home for up to a week to escape what forecasters have called a monster storm set to strike the Sunshine State this weekend. Just weeks after Columbia played host to thousands of visitors for the total solar eclipse, the capital city is rolling out the hospitality mat again.

Brad and Sonja Lipkowitz of Fort Lauderdale are here, but thinking about home. They’re hoping the home they bought last month will withstand Hurricane Irma’s impact, even as the storm’s power fluctuates between a Category 4 and a Category 5.

“We bought it a month ago, and a Category 5 comes straight at us,” said Iowa native Brad Lipkowitz, sporting his first Gamecocks T-shirt as he ate lunch in the Vista with his sister and brother-in-law. They live in Columbia and insisted the Lipkowitzes come to town.

“You’re stupid if you stay,” his sister told him when he was considering staying home, while Sonja and their 2-year-old daughter came to South Carolina.

Floridians interviewed said the heavy traffic they encountered was not as bad as they had feared.

Emergency preparedness officials Friday said the volume of vehicles on interstates around Columbia exceed normal numbers by tens of thousands.

Adams chose Columbia as a destination before heading out Thursday from South Florida.

She is trying not to think of the damage her home near the beach will sustain. “It seems it will be so destructive,” she said of Irma.

Aixa Espinel of Fort Lauderdale was busy touring the Vista after being surprised that hotels rooms still were available in Columbia. Online sites say the 11,159 rooms in Lexington and Richland counties are sold out.

“This is an unexpected vacation,” said Espinel, a paralegal. “We’ll make the best of it.”

She endured previous storms at home during the past 14 years, shrugging off power losses of up to three days.

But the strength of Irma led her to head out of town to keep her family safe. “This one is very different, and it is going straight at us,” she said.

Tim and Nicole Heise of St. Augustine packed their children Thursday into their Honda Odyssey van, but they avoided interstates as much as they could.

Relying on an app on their smartphone, Nicole Heise acted as chief navigator, snack provider and peacekeeper during what was a 7 1/2 -hour trip.

“We got lucky,” Tim Heise said at 2:15 p.m. Friday outside their Columbia hotel. “My friends going to Atlanta left at 3 a.m. and they’re not there yet.”

The interstates were busy but not intolerable, the evacuees said.

“We expected a parking lot, but it wasn’t,” Tim Heise said.

Still, traffic congestion created by evacuation orders in Florida made the drive an ordeal. Trips that travel guides said should take nine hours extended to more than 15, some said.

Robert DeSoto, a truck driver who was hauling a load of clothes for retailers in Newton, N.C., said during a pause in Columbia that his trip was likely to take 24 hours – it normally takes seven.

“It was the worst traffic I’ve ever experienced in 22 years of driving a truck,” DeSoto said Friday morning while drinking coffee at a truck stop at I-77 and Bluff Road.

This story was originally published September 8, 2017 at 11:46 AM with the headline "Columbia welcomes thousands fleeing storm."