Horry County EOC at OPCON 1 for Hanna

Horry County emergency management officials say they are ready for whatever Hanna brings.

Emergency management director, Randy Webster said the Horry county emergency operations center opened Thursday at noon at OPCON Level 1.

That means county officials are assisting with the ongoing voluntary evacuations and preparing for wherever Hanna hits.

Webster said if people are planning to evacuate from Horry County, they should leave Friday morning.

Webster said he doesn’t believe the storm will have a major impact on Horry County, but does believe it will be a significant one.

The EOC will re-open Friday at 6 a.m. and Webster said they will be fully staffed and ready to ride out the storm.

“We’ll be supporting the entire, the evacuation process even though it’s voluntary, there’s going to be issues to deal with, we’ll be supporting the shelter operations and the movement of people for those shelters if they choose to go.”

Once the storm has passed, Webster said the county will send out people to assess the damage.

And, he said since all of the necessary personnel are in one place, they will talk about Hurricane Ike.  Webster said even though that storm is a couple of days away from making landfall, he said it’s never too early to be prepared.