GARDEN CITY BEACH – Airanna Perez smiled and nodded when Lisa Gibson, wide-eyed and excited, described looking out of her window to see Garden City Beach flooded on Oct. 10.
Perez has seen it and worse.
“I’m a rare native,” the 23-year-old said standing barefoot on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Dogwood Drive while co-workers from Sea Star Realty dumped buckets filled with ocean water. “When you live here, you have to appreciate the ecosystem and everything that comes with it. You know, we’re living here on Mother Nature’s land in reality. So, part of that comes with king tides or erosion. You just have to appreciate the beauty, even if it’s a mess for us. It’s a double-sided sword.”
Perez lives a few blocks from Atlantic Avenue, the main entrance into this unincorporated section of Horry County. And she points out, she lives east of the causeway where the flooding is, and a nor’easter is churning. Unfazed in familiar flooding, Perez tried to calm Gibson’s excited amazement.
Gibson moved from New York to Garden City in October and is already thinking about heading inland.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. I called my friends back in New York and was like, ‘Look at this,'” she said after ducking her head in a few businesses on Atlantic Avenue asking if they needed help cleaning up. “I feel so bad for them. It has to be hard to be a business here with this happening all the time. They all just said they had it and they were used to it. That’s crazy. I’m ready to move but because of the noise. It was too loud this summer. But this is crazy with all this water everywhere.”
Perez, a Realtor, offered her a card and promised she could help.
Her fellow business owners on Atlantic have their own systems for dealing with the frequent floods. At Sea Star, she said, they have baseboards that are easy to pop off and let the water drain out. There is no insulation, so they don’t have to worry about it soaking up the flood water. And the interior walls are made of PVC rather than drywall that can be damaged in floods.
“We figured out how to deal with it,” she said. “We have to here. We just ask people to stay off Atlantic, avoid Atlantic Avenue until the water goes down. We’re all cleaning out and the wakes from the cars don’t help and could make it worse.”
Perez watched Gibson stick to the dry spots on the sidewalk as she made her way around the corner to the one-room local’s landmark, The Bar.
Inside The Bar, dollar bills are stuck to the walls, ceiling and the corner of the actual bar. Customers squeegee swept out water through the two open doors that didn’t close even at the height of the floods.
Bartender Chrissy Thomas set up another round for the four folks on bar stools and the three men in charge of sweeping.
“It’s just a high tide,” she said scooching out of the way for Edwin Riedel to squeegee sweep and another customer to get to the bathroom. “It’s just water. It only came up about a foot this time. I’ve been doing it for 10 years, so it’s just something you get used to it. And, you know, I have some good people here.”
Riedel wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a swig of an equally sweaty Michelob Ultra.
“Hey, we’re here to have fun. Might as well help out while we’re here,” he said. “I don’t work this hard when I’m working working, but this is fun and we’re helping.”
Fellow customer Doug Wolford agreed, wiggling around a few bar stools to push water toward the door.
“This is my bar,” Wolford said. “We love this place. We love this little place.”
This little place could also describe Garden City Beach. It’s about five miles long, two of the miles are in Horry County and the rest of the peninsula is in Georgetown County. Atlantic Avenue stretches about a mile from The Pier at Garden City to U.S. 17 Business but it’s only about 800 feet from the pier to the causeway.
When it floods, that 800-foot section is closed with ocean and causeway water mixing and twisting through many of the streets, yards and businesses.
And when there are king tides, the stretch usually floods.
King tides are high tides that usually happen when there are full or new moons. The king tides can add to erosion and flooding if a storm swoops in, as is expected over the weekend with the unnamed nor’easter threatening the coast from Charleston up to New Jersey.
The local high tide on Oct. 11 is expected to be around 11:30 a.m., and coupled with the nor’easter, the National Weather Service is predicting minor flooding 7.5-8.5 feet. It is expected to bring about four inches of rain to the already wet area.
For perspective, the weather service’s minor flood stage mark is 7 feet.
The most recent “December-cane” in 2023 was a nor’easter that drenched the area in up to 16 inches of rain and spawned an EF-1 tornado. Hurricane Ian in September 2022 dumped up to 10 inches of rain in Garden City Beach. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 topped off with 18 inches of rain in South Carolina.
Every beach town and city in Horry County is asking drivers not to drive through flood water.
North Myrtle Beach is expecting flooding in Cherry Grove from Hog Inlet south toward Sea Mountain Highway.
South of Garden City is Murrells Inlet with an expectation of some flooding along the Marshwalk. Also, Pawleys Island is expecting flooding on the causeways and some residential streets.
Flooding is expected again on Atlantic Avenue and side streets throughout Garden City.