The Charleston Post and Courier and The State newspaper both reported Wednesday that Gov. Henry McMaster and other state officials have decided not to move inmates from a medium-security prison in the South Carolina evacuation zone in preparation of Hurricane Florence.
McMaster said that it's safer for prisoners to stay put.
MacDougall Correctional Institution in rural Dorchester County is the only state prison inside the area that McMaster ordered to flee Hurricane Florence, though barely, by just 700 yards, said Brian Symmes, the governor’s spokesman.
“That’s the safest place for those people to be at this time,” McMaster said Wednesday after urging others within the zone to get out of the hurricane’s path.
The concrete-and-steel structure has a permanent generator capable of providing power for 10 days, state Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said.
“We can withstand this for seven to 10 days,” he said, noting food and medicine has been stockpiled and nurses are prepared to stay.
Like MacDougall, maximum-security Lieber Correctional also has a Ridgeville address, but it’s located 8 miles away, outside of the evacuation zones.
The S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice said it moved 41 inmates and eight staff members from the Coastal Regional Evaluation Center next to Lieber to the agency’s Broad River Road Complex in Columbia.
All 265 inmates at a minimum-security, pre-release center in the city of Florence have been moved to a prison in Clarendon County. But that’s because the Palmer Pre-Release Center, which provides work crews to local governments and GED classes to inmates nearing the end of their sentence, lacks any fences. It is not equipped like prisons, Stirling said.
They were moved Wednesday to a housing unit at medium-security Turbeville Correctional Institution.
