A private school in North Myrtle Beach is still dealing with flood waters a month after the storm in October.
The Lord’s Children, preschool and kindergarten off of 11th Avenue North is still surrounded by water.
“It is a lake; it’s our new lake front property. It’s been like this since the storm in the beginning of October,” said Debbie Smithson.
Smithson has been the director of the school for more than 30 years.
“Yes we’ve had hurricanes, and yes we’ve had rains, but it’s always gone away,” she said.
The water reaches up to the school which has forced them to make changes out of fear of mold, and bacteria.
“We’ve had to reroute them {the kids} to the back of the property. We’ve also had to move a couple of our classrooms, music, two-year-olds, to get them to an area we thought would be safer,” said Smithson.
She says they’ve tried to get rid of the water. Church parishioners who work in construction have even come out to the school and pumped for hours.
“As soon as it’s pumped, it flows right back in because the water level is so high here in this area and there really is no place to pump it,” said Smithson.
She says she’s even looked into a private company to deal with it, but it would cost more than $6,000.
Smithson says they’ve reached out to the City of North Myrtle Beach, but officials say this area is just one of a dozen problem spots in the city with bad drainage, and there is nothing the city can do to fix it right now.
“It’s frustrating we don’t’ know what to do,” said Smithson.
City officials say they’re currently evaluating the problem; however it’s going to come with a big cost that right now they say they can’t afford and there is no timeline to fix it.
