We have so much to be thankful for. The storm raged around our home in the Carolina Forest section of Myrtle Beach, and we are safe and our house and most of our neighborhood has escaped damaged. But others have not been so fortunate.
The storm's fury has devastated some areas of coastal South Carolina, but it is North Carolina where the worst destruction and some deaths have tragically occurred.
But here in Myrtle Beach, there is one story that struck me as especially tragic. It is that of a homeless man spotted by a local newspaper reporter by himself in the middle of the storm yesterday. Wearing a clear plastic trash bag and soaked through and through, he was hoping to be spotted by the police and taken to a shelter.
Here is the story as reported by the Myrtle Beach Herald. You can see his pic there.
Wearing a clear soaked trash bag, William Alford trudged down Main Street against Hurricane Florence's gusts.
Around noon Friday, the Rock Hill native was in North Myrtle Beach trying to collect his clothes from behind a nearby store. Alford, who is homeless, planned on riding out the storm near Bi-Lo, though he wasn’t sure where he’d take shelter.
He hoped authorities would notice him and take him to a shelter.“They’ll see me,” he said.
How can that happen?
To think of being completely alone with absolutely no resources in the middle of a raging hurricane with no safe place to go, your only hope is being spotted by a police officer cruising by, is impossible to imagine. What tragic circumstances brought Alford to this place at this time? Does he have no-one to care?
I called the reporter who wrote the story hoping to find out what happened. I was told they went back looking for him today, but he was gone. Hopefully, he found shelter.
Somehow, with all of the emergency crews, the evacuation orders, the help that has come to South Carolina from other states, this man was missed and left alone to fend for himself.
In this country, that just can't happen.