MLILY Mattresses in Florence, SC

The Florence Christmas Parade rolled through downtown the morning of Dec. 16. Floats, high school bands, and other groups participated in the event.

FLORENCE — A pack of eight dogs attacked a 14-month-old girl who was playing in a yard in on Twin Church Road, the Florence County Sheriff’s Office reported.

Following the Jan. 5 incident, the child’s aunt took her to the hospital, where doctors performed surgery, Sheriff T.J. Joye said. The dogs are being held by Florence County Environmental Services.

The stretch of Twin Church Road between Rucker Drive and McInville Drive where the incident happened is home to mobile homes ranging from abandoned to fenced off newer ones.

Some permanent houses stand taller than the homes among the trees and wire fences that mark off property lines. But it was by a mobile home down a dirt road with tarps on its roof and animal pens out front where the incident happened.

The people that live in the mobile home in the area the incident happened at refused to comment, calling it a family matter.

On Jan. 6, barking of dogs could be heard from the woods behind the home.

Other houses in the area also have dogs. One had almost 10, while others have one or two.

One resident, Vickie, who preferred not to give their last name, said she started to see dogs running around a month ago. She’s lived on Twin Church Road for years now.

One of the dogs attacked her, she said, and she tried to shoot it. Her husband managed to move them away. The dogs, she said, would get on top of her car and scratch the paint.

“Them dogs gonna bite people,” she said. “Them dogs bad.”

The Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate.

A “dog ordinance” moving through the County Council’s committee on justice and public safety contains a “dangerous animal” section.

The city of Florence was planning to make its existing dangerous animal ordinance stricter.

The proposed changes, which City Council passed unanimously on first reading June 12, lowered the threshold for an animal to be considered dangerous and increase penalties for violating the city’s rules.

FLORENCE — It’s one thing to decorate for Christmas. It’s another to decorate for Christmas so well that you end up on national television.

That tells you just how good the display at the Shott family home is.

Their five-acre, 300,000-light display will be featured on The Great Christmas Light Fight on ABC on Dec. 12. The show pits light displays from across the country against each other, all for the chance to win a $50,000 grand prize.

The Shotts have been decorating their Florence home for years, according to Ron Shotts, the main man behind the spectacle.

It started as a way to celebrate the holiday season.

Since 2016, they’ve collaborated with the Florence Area Humane Society to turn their Christmas celebration into a holiday fundraiser.

The fundraiser, Lights 4 Paws, has become an annual tradition. Participants, many with their dogs in tow, stroll through the walkable display each year. Shotts said they’ve helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the shelter.

“You always like to have something to show off to people, but my main thing was to get exposure so people would know we’re here and maybe draw more people in for bringing in donations,” Shotts said of his reasons for trying to get on the show.

After years of debating whether or not to apply, the Shotts finally threw their hat into the ring. It took three years, but they were rewarded with a film crew that arrived in December 2022.

Since then, they haven’t been allowed to reveal the results, and they haven’t seen the episode. They’ll be watching along with everyone else.

In the fifth episode of the season, the Shotts will be among four families competing for the trophy.

It will air at 10 p.m. Dec. 12 on ABC.

To check out this year’s light display for yourself, head to 3251 Mears Drive in Florence. Weather permitting, the display is open daily from 5:30 to 9 p.m. through Dec. 26. Admission requires a donation to the Florence Area Humane Society.

FLORENCE — A pack of eight dogs attacked a 14-month-old girl who was playing in a yard in on Twin Church Road, the Florence County Sheriff’s Office reported.

Following the Jan. 5 incident, the child’s aunt took her to the hospital, where doctors performed surgery, Sheriff T.J. Joye said. The dogs are being held by Florence County Environmental Services.

The stretch of Twin Church Road between Rucker Drive and McInville Drive where the incident happened is home to mobile homes ranging from abandoned to fenced off newer ones.

Some permanent houses stand taller than the homes among the trees and wire fences that mark off property lines. But it was by a mobile home down a dirt road with tarps on its roof and animal pens out front where the incident happened.

The people that live in the mobile home in the area the incident happened at refused to comment, calling it a family matter.

On Jan. 6, barking of dogs could be heard from the woods behind the home.

Other houses in the area also have dogs. One had almost 10, while others have one or two.

One resident, Vickie, who preferred not to give their last name, said she started to see dogs running around a month ago. She’s lived on Twin Church Road for years now.

One of the dogs attacked her, she said, and she tried to shoot it. Her husband managed to move them away. The dogs, she said, would get on top of her car and scratch the paint.

“Them dogs gonna bite people,” she said. “Them dogs bad.”

The Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate.

A “dog ordinance” moving through the County Council’s committee on justice and public safety contains a “dangerous animal” section.

The city of Florence was planning to make its existing dangerous animal ordinance stricter.

The proposed changes, which City Council passed unanimously on first reading June 12, lowered the threshold for an animal to be considered dangerous and increase penalties for violating the city’s rules.

FLORENCE — Florence has quite a few chicken and fish restaurants — but none quite like this.

Angry Chicken O’ Fish, located in a small storefront on West Evans Street, officially opened Dec. 7.

And it is very, very angry.

The takeout-style restaurant is decorated with posters depicting roosters in various states of fury. One, muscled and scowling, crosses his arms. Another wields a baseball bat. Another is positively seething, feathers popping from its body.

The sign out front features a chicken wearing a chef’s hat and hoisting a trident. A fish flops from the point.

Feeling Zhu, the restaurant’s owner, said the branding is a product of her love for chicken and the game Angry Birds. Why not combine the two?

“Some people think I have attitude,” Zhu joked, saying it’s simply her no-nonsense personality. The store’s tagline is “Chicken with attitude.”

Zhu, who is originally from Shanghai has lived in Florence for six years. She and her restaurant partners also operate the food truck PokeTown, which is on temporary hiatus while they get Angry Chicken up and running.

Angry Chicken O’ Fish focuses exclusively on fried chicken and seafood. Zhu said she wants to offer the city something new.

The food, while classically Southern, also incorporates elements of Korean cuisine in the seasoning and sauces, Zhu said.

“It’s a little bit Korean and a little bit American and a little bit Abu Dhabi. It’s kind of a little like a mixed blood,” she said.

Offerings include fried chicken, a wide array of fried seafood — perch, trout, scallops, whiting, oysters, flounder, among others — and various sides.

The meal comes in a compact cardboard box with a glowering chicken on the side.

The ambience is reminiscent of a revitalized warehouse district in the heart of an up-and-coming urban area: stone floors, concrete benches, metal tables and chairs, fluorescent lights, some of which are made to look like bottle caps.

And everywhere you look, there are angry chickens.

Dora Motley, one of the first customers after the ribbon cutting, ordered three chicken wings and two perch filets. The meal came with coleslaw and a can of soda.

Motley said she noticed signs for the new restaurant and headed over after an appointment at the nail salon. She eats out often and likes to try new restaurants when they open.

With the smell of fresh fried chicken wafting through the restaurant, she said she plans to be back.

Angry Chicken O’ Fish is located at 2047 West Evans St. It’s open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Friday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

FLORENCE — A pack of eight dogs attacked a 14-month-old girl who was playing in a yard in on Twin Church Road, the Florence County Sheriff's Office reported.

Following the Jan. 5 incident, the child's aunt took her to the hospital, where doctors performed surgery, Sheriff T.J. Joye said. The dogs are being held by Florence County Environmental Services.

The stretch of Twin Church Road between Rucker Drive and McInville Drive where the incident happened is home to mobile homes ranging from abandoned to fenced off newer ones.

Some permanent houses stand taller than the homes among the trees and wire fences that mark off property lines. But it was by a mobile home down a dirt road with tarps on its roof and animal pens out front where the incident happened.

The people that live in the mobile home in the area the incident happened at refused to comment, calling it a family matter.

On Jan. 6, barking of dogs could be heard from the woods behind the home.

Other houses in the area also have dogs. One had almost 10, while others have one or two.

One resident, Vickie, who preferred not to give their last name, said she started to see dogs running around a month ago. She’s lived on Twin Church Road for years now.

One of the dogs attacked her, she said, and she tried to shoot it. Her husband managed to move them away. The dogs, she said, would get on top of her car and scratch the paint.

“Them dogs gonna bite people," she said. "Them dogs bad."

The Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate.

A "dog ordinance" moving through the County Council’s committee on justice and public safety contains a “dangerous animal” section.

The city of Florence was planning to make its existing dangerous animal ordinance stricter.

The proposed changes, which City Council passed unanimously on first reading June 12, lowered the threshold for an animal to be considered dangerous and increase penalties for violating the city’s rules.

FLORENCE — Kimberly Lewis was having a good morning — right up until she noticed the color of the water.

She welcomed her son home from his night shift. She sent her other son to work. She made muffins with her grandchild.

When the house finally quieted, she filled up the water jug and stored it in the refrigerator. As she closed the door, a rust-red glint caught her eye.

“Here we go again,” she thought.

It’s been three months since Florence formed a task force to combat issues with discolored water. Officials have apologized for the inconvenience and say they’re doing what they can to stop it, attributing the spike in problems to a combination of construction and temporary maintenance that have stirred up iron deposits.

They say the water is still safe to drink and use largely as usual, despite the disagreeable color.

But the city’s assurances have done little to appease frustrated residents. They have flooded social media with pictures of bathtubs and sinks filled with murky water and raised questions about whether the supply is truly safe.

“If I wanted muddy water, I could go out to the creek and scoop it up,” Lewis said. “I would expect to have muddy water from a creek, not when it comes through a pipe and through a filter system that taxpayers pay for.”

‘No one wants to drink dirty water’

At least three times a week, Lewis’ water turns red. It leaves a rusty ring around the toilet. It turns the laundry brown. Sometimes, Lewis starts a bath for her 5-year old grandson, only to have him come out minutes later to tell her the water is already dirty.

“It really looks like somebody’s probably put a cup of red dirt in there,” Lewis said.

Instead of using the discolored water, she buys water from the grocery store, spending almost a $100 each month. Not even the family dog drinks the water from the faucet these days.

In interviews and on social media, residents described similar experiences. But the precise issue varied. Some said the water was brown or yellow. Others said it had a strange smell. Sometimes the discoloration is constant, while other times it only happens occasionally. Many said they’ve had problems before, but nothing this bad. This is new.

City officials are well aware of the problem, and they’ve been working on it for months.

In August, the city assembled a Water Quality Team to respond to a spike in complaints.

In June, complaints doubled to 90 after an average of 46 complaints each month over the previous year. In August, 109 people complained. Complaints fell off in September before rebounding to 124 in October.

While there had always been isolated issues with discolored water in certain areas, those issues multiplied and spread across the city, City Manager Randy Osterman said at the time.

“We understand their frustration. We apologize for their inconvenience. We get it. No one wants to drink dirty water,” Osterman said.

Graphic: Poor water quality complaints in Florence, SC

Florence began to receive very high call volumes beginning in June of 2023, though complaints declined dramatically in September. In October, the reports became less isolated in the west and southwest areas of the distribution system and more random, according to the city. In October, three major line breaks occurred and the West Florence Fire District conducted annual hydrant checks and flushing, which contributed to disruptions to the system.

The Post and Courier | SOURCE: CITY OF FLORENCE

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The task force is composed of more than 20 people, including city staff and outside engineers with water expertise.

Utilities Director Jerry Dudley said the city has made some progress in understanding and addressing the problem, though work is ongoing.

Here are the basics:

Florence uses a combination of water from an underground aquifer and the Pee Dee River. The groundwater has a high proportion of iron, a geological quirk of the area. Small particles of the iron regularly make their way into the system.

Under normal circumstances, the iron settles at the bottom of the waterlines, much the same way that salt settles at the bottom of a cooking pot.

But when the system is disturbed — say, if a line is hit during construction or the pressure in the pipes changes — the iron floats up and is carried into homes.

Normally, Florence officials say, that’s a minor problem. But a recent chain of events has made it a major one.

First, construction on Alligator Road has caused disturbances. Contractors have damaged lines, and even the mere presence of heavy machinery can vibrate the water line and stir up iron.

Second, two wells and a plant have been offline due to maintenance issues. That means the system can’t operate normally as usual.

Dudley said officials have started working on solutions, but he repeatedly emphasized the city needs residents’ help to identify all of the problems.

Staff can’t address an issue if they don’t know about it, and the more data they have, the more likely they can develop a fix. Problems may also be unique to an individual home, not part of the systemic issue officials are seeing, Dudley said.

“We really need to know these things, too, because it helps us improve when we know what’s going on out there and know they’re having problems and where the problems are occurring,” Dudley said.

Of the five people who spoke with The Post and Courier, not everyone routinely reported their issues — or reported them at all.

Two of them had not called the city, despite dealing with discolored water for months on end. Another called just once when the problem began and hasn’t checked in since.

Lewis called in every problem she saw when the discoloration began several months ago. But as the problem persisted and city staff could only provide temporary fixes, her calls trailed off.

“I gave up,” she said.

Is it safe?

When Katie Barnes bathes her kids, she often wonders whether the water is safe.

Ever since she moved into her new home several months ago, Barnes’ water has come out brown and gritty.

She wonders if, several decades down the road, her children will have some rare health defect or an increased risk of disease caused by something lurking in the water, something that officials didn’t know about or didn’t understand.

“I’m super concerned,” she said. “I don’t know what’s in that, you know?”

She and others who have had problems said they worry the discoloration is a symptom of a larger problem. High-profile water-quality disasters — such as those in Flint, Mich., or Jackson, Miss. — loom large in their minds.

If the problem is just due to iron in the pipes, the water is safe, according to health officials.

But what if it’s not?

It’s a fear encouraged by the opaque world of water systems and what residents worry is a lack of oversight.

“People do not realize in general what happens behind the scenes to get safe water to their homes,” said David Baize, executive director of the South Carolina Water Associations.

Water systems must wrangle a complex and ever-changing blend of challenges, from miles of aging pipe to the geography of the region to the unique chemical makeup of each system’s water, Baize said.

“That is a very complicated process. Sometimes that takes a lot of professionals to make sure everything is done just right to deliver safe water,” he said.

Problems are bound to come up, but ultimately South Carolina’s water systems have a high compliance rate, he said. Drinking water is also highly regulated.

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The Department of Health and Environmental Control oversees all water systems in South Carolina. Florence is required to file regular water reports with DHEC, and each year it publishes an annual report for the public to review.

Florence also tests its water regularly, looking for everything from chlorine to bacteria. The city provides the samples to both its in-house lab, certified by DHEC, and a third-party lab. DHEC also does inspections of the city’s facilities on a roughly annual basis, Dudley said.

Among public water systems in South Carolina, Florence has a standard safety record.

According to federal data, of the almost 1,400 public water systems in South Carolina, the average number of violations since the 1970s is eight — the same number that Florence has received.