EDITOR'S NOTE: Manninglive.com will be looking at the Top 15 stories of 2016, with a few updates here and there as available, over the next few days.
Skepticism was high among Clarendon residents in late September as the second of two hurricanes threatened to skirt the South Carolina coast within a two-week period.
But Hurricane Matthew did what Tropical Storm Hermine had failed to do, plunging Clarendon residents into a week of darkness in some places, and causing more than $5.6 million in damages throughout the county.
It's no surprise, then, that Matthew and its aftermath dominated headlines in the latter part of the year, and that stories related to the storm take up a majority of the top-viewed spots on manninglive.com.
After blowing into Clarendon County in early October, Hurricane Matthew's biggest hassle was cutting off the majority of the county's electricity.
By Oct. 8, about 90 percent of the county was in darkness, and estimates from power companies were bleak. Some called for power to be off for as many as 10 days.
Ultimately, most power was restored within a week, and Clarendon residents went so far as to provide food to the linemen who came from as far away as Canada and Maine.
Other issues throughout the aftermath of the storm included Clarendon waiting nearly a week longer than its neighboring counties to be declared eligible for individual assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Also, Clarendon residents were not pleased with the lack of assistance from the Department of Social Services regarding food stamps. Residents with food stamps who had already spent their money by Oct. 10 were elated to find out that they would be reimbursed for those losses. However, residents who lost all their food but do not receive SNAP benefits were livid at not receiving any help. Ultimately, a post about what assistance would and would not be provided by DSS regarding food stamps garnered the most comments of any post on manninglive.com in 2016, bringing in more than 275 responses within just a few days.
