South Carolina officials will try to evacuate more than 1 million residents ahead of potential landfall by Hurricane Matthew this weekend.
Gov. Nikki Haley announced the plan on Tuesday. The evacuations are not mandated, Greenville Online reports, but officials said they would reverse traffic on state highways and send more than 300 school buses to areas along the storm’s path to assist with evacuations.
{mosads}Officials hope to move everyone near the coast at least 100 miles inland before the hurricane traverses up the East Coast this weekend.
“I would love nothing more than to see this just suddenly take a right hand turn and head back out to sea, but as of right now, we’re looking at Friday night into Saturday being pretty brutal,” Haley said.
Hurricane Matthew is currently a Category 4 storm, packing sustained winds of nearly 145 miles per hour on its approach to Haiti Tuesday morning.
The latest estimates predict the storm’s path going northwest along Florida’s Atlantic Coast on Friday. The storm could move up along the Atlantic seaboard through the weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The hurricane has forced President Obama to cancel a South Florida campaign stop for Hillary Clinton; he will visit the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday to discuss the storm instead.
The United States is in the midst of a historic hurricane drought. A major storm — a hurricane classified as Category 3 or higher — has not struck the Gulf or East Coast in more than 10 years.