Myrtle Beach storm & claim resource

The Grand Strand floods from two directions. The ocean pushes surge over the beachfront, and behind the city the Waccamaw River and the Intracoastal Waterway back up for days after the rain stops. Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018 both did their worst damage inland, along the rivers, sometimes a week after the wind was gone — and the resulting claims raise the hardest question in South Carolina property insurance: which storm, and which peril, owes for the damage?

What Myrtle Beach claims turn on

Surge and rising river water are flood, and flood is excluded from every homeowners policy — it needs NFIP or private flood coverage. Wind is covered, behind a named-storm deductible that is a percentage of the home’s insured value, not the loss. When a home is both wind-damaged and flooded, the wind carrier and the flood carrier each point at the other. On the Grand Strand’s slow river floods, insurers also argue over timing — whether the loss was wind-driven rain during the storm or floodwater that arrived days later — an allocation fight that closes a large share of these claims without full payment.

The law here

South Carolina has no matching statute, so a demand to match undamaged roof, siding, or tile turns on the policy’s “like kind and quality” language and, often, appraisal. Bad-faith conduct is governed by S.C. Code § 38-59, and § 38-59-40 shifts attorney’s fees when an insurer refuses to pay a covered loss without reasonable cause. Every deadline and figure on this page is general information — confirm your policy, your dates, and the current statutes with counsel before relying on them.