Action Heating & Air Conditioning in Summerville, SC

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCSC) - A new fire station is coming to the town of Summerville, making it the town’s sixth station.

Summerville Fire Department Chief Richard Waring says the new station will be built on Miles Jamison Road, right next to the Coastal Center. He says right now, they’re finishing up site work for the new station, and they hope to finish by December. The plan is for them to start clearing land by Jan. 1, Waring said.

There is not an address assigned to the site yet, but Waring says it will be located between the traffic circle and the Coastal Center on Miles Jameson Road. It would be on the same side of the road as the Coastal Center.

Waring says Fire Station 6 is going to improve their efficiency, especially as Summerville continues to grow.

“Just looking at the response times and what not for the area that this station’s going to serve,” Waring said. “Neighborhoods such as Summerville Place, the Lakes of Summerville, and those neighborhoods that are in town, it’ll improve our response time to those areas, and that’s what we were looking to do.”

Waring says the closest Summerville fire station to this area is on Trolley Road in the Oakbrook community. While that station averages about a seven to 10 minute response time to the area, Waring says the new Fire Station 6 will get them down to a less than five minute response time.

Waring says Summerville Fire is working with Dorchester County on the land agreement for the new station. While it is in town limits, he says they are going to be able to serve some areas in unincorporated Dorchester County as well.

Waring says they’ve renovated two existing stations over the last few years, but the last new station in town was Fire Station 5 in Knightsville. That was built back in 2014.

“Well, it’s just, it’s exciting,” Waring said. “Anytime you add a new fire station facility, it’s great for the department because it gives us a sense of pride for a new facility, and it’s also a better service we’ll be able to provide for our citizens, so we’re excited for that.”

Waring says Fire Station 6 will have the same features as the other stations in town, like work out equipment, diesel exhaust systems, and safety features on the building.

Fire Station 6 will have one fire engine and 12 firemen based out of it.

Waring says they are hiring for new members and those interested can apply on the town of Summerville’s website.

Copyright 2021 WCSC. All rights reserved.

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCIV) — For many Summerville residents who live on South Main Street, they share this sentiment:

“If I didn't have to worry about every time it rained hard. I'd be happy,” Resident Todd Hibbard said.

The combination of recent rain in the Lowcountry and extra precipitation during hurricane season has caused flooding to become a major issue.

ABC News 4 recently covered the flooding issue in district one of Summerville near Warring Street. But the problem is just as prevalent in district two.

The director of public works in Summerville, Russ Cornette, said that this problem occurs because of the location of the town.

“We get these really high intensity, rainfall events in short periods of time that really overload overburdened the existing drainage system that we have all around town. And unfortunately, the system isn't large enough to handle the volume of water," Cornette said.

The neighborhood is located on a six foot decline from Main Street, which causes the flooding to rush downhill at high speeds and finding its way into backyards and surrounding properties.

The current is so strong that some residents joke that it may be faster to travel by boat.

“The current, if you had a canoe you could go from second to third and lickety split. It's just really bad,” Summerville resident Lisa Hammerlee said.

When large rainfalls come it leaves many residents to pick up the pieces and take it into their own hands to stop the flooding.

“I'm out here in the rain with a pitchfork trying to move pine straw to get the water to go somewhere,” Hubbard said.

Something that is an unpleasant feeling for many neighbors.

“I just feel upset. I just know. I know it's going to be harming all of my neighbor's property, it's going to be harming mine, I'm going to have a huge mess to clean up and and it's getting worse and worse and worse,” Hammerlee said.

But on top of the nuisance that the flooding is causing to these Summerville residents it is also doing damage to many of their properties.

One resident estimated it might take anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 to fix the damage to their property that this flooding has caused.

“I've had to have boards replaced on the bottom of my shed,” Summerville resident Cathy Lawter said.

“So the back of my car carports rotted out. I have tools in my shed that have been flooded out,” Hubbard said.

“It's just ruining property. And no one likes to see their property being ruined,” Hammerlee said.

All three of these neighbors said that they have been reaching out to the town for help since 2019 and have received little to no response until recently.

Another cause for frustration in this small town.

“We shouldn't get floods like that every time. We shouldn't have to clean up like that every time we shouldn't have to repair damage every time, you know when shouldn't have to try to get flood insurance. I mean, we just shouldn't have to do any of that,” Lawter said.

However, Cornette says that the town is aware of the problem and now working towards a solution.

This includes helping the upkeep of local drain pipes, adding more drain outlets and he said he would considering doing more if those methods do not work.

“The town is in process of several drainage projects and different stages of development.”

ABC News 4 also reached out to District Two council member in Summerville Terry Jenkins, who said in part “We are really trying to get it to where the flooding that is being caused doesn’t get into people’s homes. Having people call, reaching back quickly, finding out where they are, making sure you keep the drain hole covers cleans.”

The one thing these town officials emphasized was that it was going to take time to fix the problem.

However, for Lawter, she wants something a little different.

“Just acknowledgement? I mean, not wait 60 days to respond to something, or just make it a little easier process?" Lawter said.

Lawter and her neighbors said that when they notified the town that they were going to have a reporter come cover the story that is when the town stepped in and came to the property.

She did applaud Jenkins and Cornette for their work when they got to her property and say they hope to have solution in the near future.

The Berkeley County unemployment rate stayed the same during the late summer.

SUMMERVILLE, SC — The U.S. posted its weakest job recovery month of the year in September, with just 194,000 non-farm jobs added to the economy.

The September jobs report was even worse than that in August, when 366,000 jobs were created, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The national unemployment rate dropped 0.4 percentage points to 4.8 percent despite the September disappointment.

The latest available local unemployment figures are for August; that rate stayed the same as July for the Summerville area and is still lower than it was during the worst of the pandemic, the BLS said.

The Berkeley County unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in August, unchanged from July. That reflected some improvement from August 2020, when the unemployment rate stood at 5.0 percent.

The August unemployment rate in Berkeley County was lower than the South Carolina rate of 4.2 percent, according to the latest local figures from the BLS.

Nationally, 17.4 million jobs have been added back to the economy since April 2020. Still, the country is down 5 million positions (3.3 percent) from pre-pandemic levels.

The jobs report was likely affected negatively by multiple crises, according to The Washington Post. Parts of the country were reeling from Hurricane Ida's devastating damage. Wildfires in California have also caused business disruption. Coronavirus cases were also much higher in early to mid-September than they are now.

Average hourly wages continued to climb in September, with a 17-cent gain to $30.85. Hourly wages have grown for six months in a row as employers look to fill vacant positions.

Employees have been more willing than ever to leave their employers. A record 4.3 million employees quit their jobs in August, according to the BLS.

The leisure/hospitality and professional/business service industries led the way for September job gains with 74,000 and 60,000 jobs, respectively. Retail trade jobs increased by 56,000 jobs after two months of little change.

Editor's note: This post was automatically generated using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program. Please report any errors or other feedback to content@patch.com.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Officials at the South Carolina Emergency Management Division are closely monitoring our state’s seismic activity.

Earlier this week, the Summerville and Ladson area experienced three earthquakes in a matter of hours.

Derrec Becker with the state’s Emergency Management Division says the last time we had three earthquakes in about seven hours was back in 2003. And while he says it’s a little unusual to get three in a row, it just proves how seismically active South Carolina is.

“Where these earthquakes occurred is centered sort of near where the largest earthquake ever recorded on the Eastern seaboard occurred, and that was back in August of 1886,” Becker says.

On August 31, 1886, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit Charleston. The initial shock lasted nearly one minute. It was felt over 2.5 million square miles from Chicago to Cuba.

“You felt a 3.2,” Becker says about the earthquake that occurred Monday night. “Imagine an earthquake that is exponentially greater than that. That’s what we experienced. That’s why we’re very cautious when we talk about earthquakes.”

SCEMD did a study and looked at what would happen if we got an earthquake of a similar magnitude of what we got in 1886. They found the following:

South Carolina normally experience 10-20 earthquakes a year, about two or three of which we can actually feel.

“We know that some people might be concerned seeing three right in a row is the building up to something major,” Becker says. “Unfortunately, we won’t know until we get a major earthquake and then we can say definitively ‘yes those were building up to this and those were foreshocks.’ If we don’t experience a major earthquake after this, or in the near future, it’s just normal background seismicity.”

Officials say they are about 50/50 the three earthquakes we experienced were just the Earth releasing pressure. We won’t know if it was building toward something greater for another six months to a year or even longer.

Click here to look through SCEMD’s Earthquake Guide which lists how to take cover and how to prepare for an earthquake.

Copyright 2021 WCSC. All rights reserved.

NEWBERRY, S.C. – Redshirt-senior Dre Harris (Greenville, S.C.) posted a pair of rushing touchdowns on the night as the Newberry College football team (5-2, 4-1 SAC) handed the Indians of Catawba College (4-1, 1-1 SAC) their first loss of the year by a 14-7 margin inside the friendly confines of Setzler Field on Saturday, October 16. The Wolves bested the Indians in nearly every statistical category, but the stand-out number was the 80 yards the Wolves held the conference leading rushing attack to.

Catawba was only able to muster 165 yards of offense, most of which came in the first half as the Wolves were able to hold them to under 30 yards on every drive in the second thirty minutes of action. Harris threw for 173 yards on the evening as he was able to complete 11 of his 18 attempts in the contest. Redshirt-senior Bryson Woodruff (Roebuck, S.C.) would prove to be his favorite target on the evening catching four passes for 45 yards, including a hefty 37-yard pickup.

But it was the ground game that truly sparked the Newberry offense on the evening, an attack that was led by redshirt-sophomore Mario Anderson (Summerville, S.C) who finished the evening with 129 yards on the ground, including a 29-yard scamper. Harris was the second leading rusher on the evening for the Scarlet and Gray as he was able to rack up 75 yards on the ground, tallying both the touchdowns for the Wolves on the night.

Newberry was able to open the contest with nearly an eight and half minute drive that would last 14 plays but would end up with a punt from just inside Catawba territory that gave the Indians offense their first look of the contest. They would take advantage of that opportunity as they drove 80 yards for the first score of the game to take a 7-0 lead. The Wolves would start to drive down the field, but the quarter break would stall their momentum as they were forced to punt for the second time on the evening.

It looked like Catawba would drive down the field again, but a big-time sack by redshirt-junior AJ Valentine (Johnston, S.C.) would help bring their drive to a quick close and give the Wolves possession with a touchback punt to set-up the Wolves on their own 20. Harris would complete two big chunk passes to Woodruff and graduate student Bobby Irby (Irmo, S.C) that accounted for 59 yards of the drive. Harris would then take the ball up the middle himself and scamper in from 15 yards out to pull the Wolves back even at seven point a piece heading into the halftime break.

After deferring the opening coin toss, Catawba took the opening kick of the second half and drove to nearly half field before another pivotal sack by redshirt-senior Chase Rogers (Dalzell, S.C.) would bring that drive to a halt, though a tough targeting call on the Wolves off the punt would pin then inside their own 10-yard line to start their next drive. Newberry would make it just across the 50-yard mark before having to punt the ball back to Catawba. However, the Wolves would force a three-and-out and a 19-yard punt return by graduate student Brentley Allen (Lexington, S.C.) would set up the Wolves on the Indians 33 yard-line.

Newberry would chip away at that yardage with multiple short gain rushes as they sat waiting on the seven yard-line when the quarter flipped to the fourth. Harris would waste no time at the start of the fourth quarter as he would take the first play from scrimmage around the right side and dove to the pylon to give the Wolves the 14-7 lead.

Catawba would be able to get off a field-goal attempt on their next drive, after only being able to pick up one first-down, but would not get any points out of it as it sailed wide to the left of the uprights. Newberry would nearly mirror that effort on their next drive as they would set up for a 35-yard attempt but theirs two would go wide of the post to the left side.

The two teams would then again trade special teams plays, this time in the form of a punt over their next two drives before Catawba would take over with just two minutes to play in the contest. After a first down rush and a completion, the Indians would post back-to-back incompletions, however the second of which would be called for pass interference by graduate student Anthony Blue (Newton, N.C.) which keep the drive alive for Catawba. Blue would have a very short memory though as he would lock the game down for the Wolves on the next play, picking off the Indians and giving the ball back to the Wolves with just over a minute left to play. Harris would line his squad up in the victory formation and take home the 14-7 win, handing the Indians their first conference and overall loss on the year.

Valentine led the Newberry defense with seven tackles on the evening, two for loss, as well as adding a sack to his credit. Sophomore Juwan Moye (Lilburn, Ga.) added four tackles in the contest and a sack as well.

The Wolves return to Setzler Field a week from today for their Homecoming game as they welcome in the Eagles of Carson-Newman University on Saturday, October 23. Kick-off is currently set for 4:00 p.m.