Businesses on Gill’s Creek fear flooding; take extraordinary measures

Along flood-prone Gill’s Creek on Friday some businesses were open, but their owners were nervous.

Forest Lake Fabrics on Forest Drive just reopened last week after October’s floods, and owner Michael Marsha was carefully monitoring the bands of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Hermine. The business is located at the confluence of Gill’s Creek and Eight Mile Creek. It flooded badly in last fall’s historic rainfall.

“I’m flipping out,” Marsha said. “I just opened last Monday and now this.”

Marsha had a pallet of 50-pound bags of concrete sand on hold at a nearby Lowe’s. His contractor, Ryan Horton of Indigo Construction, was ready to pick up the pallet if needed.

But Horton had gone one step farther.

During the October flood, a retaining wall on Gill’s Creek directly behind Forest Lake Fabrics breached. It was still not repaired on Thursday, because Forest Acres hadn’t been able to land a grant to fix it.

The breach was a threat to the fabric store and adjoining businesses if the creek rose substantially. So Horton — alone, on his own and without charge — built a 110-foot long dam along the wall to reinforce it.

“We had some concrete on the site and some left over materials back there,” Horton said as he loaded up his excavator about 2 p.m. Friday. “There was also a bunch of rubble from the building back there that we had deposited to haul off later.”

So Horton piled up the concrete, rubble and scrap along the ruptured wall and back filled with dirt.

“It was just me and a John Deere excavator,” he said. “That area is extremely low, prone to flooding and threatened to flood these businesses again. Michael just opened on Monday. I’m not going to watch this (flood again) because the wall hasn’t been fixed. Hopefully we’ll be all right.”

Horton started about 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and finished about 8 p.m. He made it home for the University of South Carolina football game.

“I got there for the first play,” he said.

Marsha said that wasn’t the first time Horton has worked for free on the creek.

After the October flood, he and his crews cleaned all the trees and trash out of that section of the creek to minimize future floods.

“He took at least 10 of those big (roll-off dumpsters) out of there,” Marsha said. “He’s bent over backwards for this community. He deserves a lot of kudos.”

Farther downstream, at La Brasca’s Pizza on Jackson Boulevard, manager Thomas Clark was also open, but was nervous about what might happen. The eatery also was flooded in October.

“We’re just playing it by ear,” he said.

Across the street at Rosewood Crossing ‑ which houses Marshall’s, Michael’s and PetSmart and was heavily damaged in October ‑ all of the stores but Bottles were closed and flood doors had been secured.

“Maybe they know something I don’t,” Clark said.

This story was originally published September 2, 2016 at 6:02 PM.