N. Charleston’s neighbors faced waist-deep water in Monday’s floods

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) — For residents of a North Charleston community, getting home from work or school seemed an impossible task amid flooding caused by Monday’s heavy rains.

With only one entry and exit into the Charlestowne Village Mobile Home Park, one resident said his car completely stopped working after driving through the water.

Elliott and Giselle Avila said it was hard coming home after school.

“We’ve lived here for four to five years and we haven’t seen that,” said Giselle Avila.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Elliott Avila.

People living in the Charlestowne Village Mobile Home Park said their neighborhood floods when it rains, but never like this.

Arrianna Walker said she and her mother got stuck in their car trying to get home.

“She said, ‘We have to walk home because our car can’t make it,'” Walker said. “And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ So it’s very deep. It arrived like our thighs and we were scared. There were bugs and stuff like that that touched us and we were just like, ‘Oh no.’”

Walker’s little brother, Elijah Higgins, said he saw other neighbors walking through the water.

“I don’t know if I went through it, if I would have been underwater, or if it would have just been like this,” he said, pointing to his neck to show where the water might be rising.

The Avilas say they also had trouble getting home from school.

“And everyone on the bus said, ‘No, I’m not going on. As if that were too deep. What happened here?’ It was crazy,” Elliott Avila said.

The Avilas said as they drove through the floods they began seeing water seeping into their car.

“We were driving and some water got into the engine,” said Giselle Avila. “There was a lot of water coming in so we drove slowly, but we also drove a little bit fast because we felt there was more water coming in.”

One resident said there was only one major drain on the side of the neighborhood that had the most flooding. She said the drain is where the water was deepest during the flood. One person was trying to clear debris around him to try to get the water to drain faster.

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