When the Waccamaw River and the Intracoastal Waterway near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, flooded from the heavy rains following Hurricane Florence, three homeowners decided to fight back with flood barriers. Geodesign Barriers, with their US HQ in Hobe Sound in Florida, answered a call from Myrtle Beach homeowner Ted Richardson on the night of 20 September and loaded a lorry with equipment to make the 650-mile drive to South Carolina the following day. By mid-Saturday, the two-man crew from Geodesign Barriers had surrounded three houses, well before the flood had reached any of them.
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"We had to act fast and focus on loading the lorry immediately after we got off the phone with Mr. Richardson," said Sam Kullberg, VP of Geodesign Barriers. "As soon as we reached Myrtle Beach and met up with the lorry to offload the eleven tonnes of equipment, we knew we would be ok. The build-up takes less than a couple of hours per house, for the two of us."
The flood barriers were a huge success and kept all three houses completely dry, saving the homeowners from more than $100,000 in damages.
The successful barriers gathered attention from the local neighbours as well as from the National Guard, FEMA and Corps of Engineers, USACE.
"The barriers saved my home," said Ted Richardson, who finished building his dream house less than one year ago.
Geodesign Barriers is a Florida-based flood protection company. Just like Geodesign Barriers Ltd in the UK, it is a subsidiary of Swedish flood protection and civil engineering company Geodesign AB, with a history of twenty-three years in flood protection in Europe, and has recently established itself in the United States.
www.geodesignbarriers.com
