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The Myrtle Beach area is getting something new — an art studio perfect for home decorating projects or a place to learn a new skill.

Nailed It DIY Studio, a franchise that originated in South Carolina, will open a new family-run location in the Market Common area on Oct. 13.

At the studio, customers can start their wood art projects, attend art classes, or hold their private events.

“From scheduled studio time and adult classes to junior workshops, private parties, summer camps, drop-ins and Take and Make kits, Nailed It truly has something for everyone,” a press release stated.

The Myrtle Beach location will be the 34th studio the franchise has opened since starting in Rock Hill, S.C.

Julie Evans, the owner of the Myrtle Beach location, said that the Oct. 13 opening date will be a “soft opening,” meaning that the studio will continue to have work done on the interior as customers are allowed in.

The studio will be open from 12-5 p.m. and is centrally located in the Market Common shopping district, between Yoga in Common, and Coastal Dancing. The location used to be the Stage Left Theatre Company, a drama school in Myrtle Beach.

Evans, who works remotely as an interior designer, will run the studio classes alongside her daughter. The two began talking about starting a business in 2020.

“We were like, I don’t want to work in the corporate world, I’m tired of it, now’s our chance,” Evans said.

As far as future plans go, the studio’s main priority is utilizing social media and getting involved with the community. Evans said that this means having stalls at flea markets, the Market Common farmers market, and as many events as possible.

“I think our biggest thing is like we really want to have a lot of community involvement,” Evans said.

According to Evans, customers will be able to bring in their food and beverage in the future, which was included in the lease when they signed in July.

Evans added that while she and her daughter are new to owning a business, they were excited about the future.

“This is our first run at anything like this,” Evans said. “We are both very hands-on. So for us, this is fun.”

Daniel Kelly and his wife bought a 1977 doublewide mobile home in May for about $83,000 at Tropicana Sands, a community for people 55 and older in Fort Myers, Florida. But he ran into roadblocks when he tried to insure it.

Managers at Tropicana Sands told him he likely wouldn’t be able to find a carrier who would offer a policy because the home was too old. He said he checked with a Florida-based insurance agent who searched and couldn’t find anything.

“I can insure a 1940s car, why can’t I insure this?” Kelly said.

Kelly was lucky that his trailer was largely spared by Hurricane Ian aside from some flood damage. But for many Floridians whose homes were destroyed, they now face the arduous task of rebuilding without insurance or paying even steeper prices in an insurance market that was already struggling. Wind and storm-surge losses from the hurricane could reach between $28 billion and $47 billion, making it Florida's costliest storm since Hurricane Andrew made landfall in 1992, according to the property analytics firm CoreLogic.

Even before Ian, Florida's home insurance market was dealing with billions of dollars in losses from a string of natural disasters, rampant litigation and increasing fraud. The difficult environment has put many insurers out of business and caused others to raise their prices or tighten their restrictions, making it harder for Floridians to obtain insurance.

Those who do manage to insure their homes are seeing costs increase exponentially. Even before Hurricane Ian, the annual cost of an average Florida homeowners insurance policy was expected to reach $4,231 in 2022, nearly three times the U.S. average of $1,544.

“They are paying more for less coverage,” said Florida’s Insurance Consumer Advocate Tasha Carter. “It puts consumers in dire circumstances.”

The costs have gotten so high that some homeowners have forgone coverage altogether. About 12% of Florida homeowners don't have property insurance — or more than double the U.S. average of 5% — according to the Insurance Information Institute, a research organization funded by the insurance industry.

Florida’s insurance industry has seen two straight years of net underwriting losses exceeding $1 billion each year. A string of property insurers, including six so far this year, have become insolvent, while others are leaving the state.

As of July, 27 Florida insurers were on a state watchlist for their precarious financial situation; Mark Friedlander, the head of communications for the Insurance Information Institute, expects Hurricane Ian will cause at least some of those to tip into insolvency.

The insurance industry says overzealous litigation is partly to blame. Loopholes in Florida law, including fee multipliers that allow attorneys to collect higher fees for property insurance cases, have made Florida an excessively litigious state, Friedlander said.

Florida currently averages about 100,000 lawsuits over homeowners' insurance claims per year, he said. That compares to just 3,600 in California, which has almost double Florida's population.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation said the state accounts for 76% of the nation’s homeowners' insurance claims lawsuits but just 9% of all homeowners insurance claims.

“Plaintiff attorneys in Florida have historically found ways of circumventing any efforts at reining in legal system abuses, making it likely that ongoing reforms will be needed to further stabilize the insurance marketplace," said Logan McFaddin of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

But Amy Boggs, the property section chair for the Florida Justice Association — a group that represents attorneys — said the insurance industry is also at fault for refusing to pay out claims. Boggs said homeowners are driven to attorneys “as a last resort.”

“No policyholder wants to be embroiled in years of litigation just to get their homes rebuilt," she said. “They come to attorneys when their insurance company underpays their claim and they can’t rebuild.”

Rampant fraud — particularly among roofing contractors — has also added to costs. Regulators say it's common for contractors to go door-to-door offering to cover homeowners' insurance deductible in exchange for submitting a full roof replacement claim to their property insurance company, claiming damage from storms.

Things have gotten so bad with insurance that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a special session in May to address the issues. New laws limit the rates attorneys can charge for some property insurance claims and require insurers to insure homes with older roofs — something they had stopped doing because of rising fraud claims.

The legislation also includes a $150 million fund that will offer grants to homeowners to make improvements to protect against hurricanes. But that program has yet to be launched, and experts say it will take years to reverse the damage to Florida's insurance market.

In the meantime, the crisis has pushed more homeowners to Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer that sells home insurance for those who can't get coverage through private insurers.

Citizens had more than 1 million active policies as of Sept. 23, before Ian hit, according to Michael Peltier, a spokesman at Citizens. In 2019, that number was roughly 420,000. He said the company had been writing 8,000 to 9,000 new policies per week, double compared with a few years ago. Citizens has $13.4 billion in reserves and predicts it will pay 225,000 claims from Ian worth a total of $3.7 billion.

Even if they have homeowners’ insurance, many Floridians could still be facing financial ruin because of flooding. Flood damage isn’t typically covered by homeowners’ insurance but can be costly; Florida’s Division of Emergency Management says 1 inch of floodwater can do $25,000 in damage.

Friedlander said just 18% of Florida homeowners carry flood insurance, either through the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program or private insurers. In some coastal areas, more than half of homeowners have flood insurance, but in inland areas — where flood waters continued to rise even after the storm had passed — it's closer to 5%.

Kelly, whose trailer in Fort Myers was saturated in 4 feet of salt water and sewage after Hurricane Ian, could have benefitted from flood insurance. He thought he might not be able to get it because he didn't have homeowners insurance, but that's not the case — flood insurance is completely separate and can even be purchased by renters, experts say.

“I kinda let it lie when I originally couldn’t find someone to insure it," he said. “It's a costly oversight on my part."

Associated Press writer Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

For more coverage of Hurricane Ian, go to: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

This story was originally published October 5, 2022 1:22 AM.

COLUMBIA | Olivia Borgman never stopped smiling.

Not when North Myrtle Beach found itself down two sets to open the Class 4A volleyball championship match to Aiken.

Certainly not when the Chiefs fought their way back to force a deciding fifth set.

And not even when the Green Hornets capped off their 40-win season with a 15-11 victory in the final set.

Borgman had a different mindset. It wasn’t one of defeat. This was only the beginning.

“Two more years,” the sophomore said after Aiken’s 3-2 victory at Dreher. “Going on strong.”

North Myrtle Beach, with the bulk of its roster comprised of underclassmen, rose up the Class 4A ranks ahead of schedule in the first year of coach Alex Sing’s return to the program. Behind Borgman and freshman Clara Cloninger, the Chiefs ran roughshod through Region VI and then May River, James Island and Lucy Beckham in the postseason.

Saturday, though, Aiken put up a huge road block.

The Green Hornets won set one 25-22. Then won by the same score in set two. North Myrtle Beach had been playing solid volleyball, but then something else happened.

The Chiefs started staving off some of the Aiken attacks, mostly from senior Natalie Bland, and Borgman and Cloninger led a furious comeback. North Myrtle Beach won set 4 25-23.

Set four, though, was a story in itself.

After leading by as many as seven points, the Chiefs could do little but slow Aiken’s last-ditch effort to end the match early. The Green Hornets led 25-24 before North Myrtle Beach eventually staved off the rally to win 29-27.

“We knew it was going to be a fight. If we could hang in there and put a little bit of pressure on them, then two good teams get together and we know it could go either way,” said Sing, who led the program to state championships in 2018 and 2019. “Thankfully at least a couple of those sets went our way. That fifth set was kind of back and forth. I think in the end, their experience - obviously a lot of seniors on that team and they had been here before - that was the difference.”

Despite a six-loss regular season, Mickey Wilson’s belief in his Myrtle Beach team never wavered. And after a daunting first-round playoff test at May River, his team is still standing.

Jake Doty hauled in the go-ahead touchdown pass from Tristan McGee with three minutes to play, and a hungry Auntay Campbell forced a fumble inside the red zone to survive May River 24-21 on Friday and advance to the second round of the Class 4A playoffs.

“Really proud of our seniors, they continue to battle and grind,” Wilson said. “To come on the road, travel this far and get a win, it’s huge.”

Myrtle Beach trailed 21-10 in the third quarter after backup May River quarterback Garrett Diemel found the end zone from two yards out, but the Seahawk offense returned to life thanks to a methodical 12-play drive. Quarterback Wyatt Cannon connected with Jason Nash for a pair of completions before Cam Ward and Malachi Washington took over on the ground. Washington punctuated the drive from the two-yard line to cut the Shark lead to 21-17.

But the Seahawks had to put a stop to May River’s hard-nosed ground game in order to mount the comeback.

They did it early in the fourth quarter, stuffing three straight runs before containing Diemel on fourth-and-4 just outside the 10. Then, with the season on the line, Wilson’s offense conjured up something magical.

Led by the clutch play of both McGee and Cannon, Myrtle Beach converted three consecutive fourth-down passes and marched inside the Shark 20 with under four minutes to go.

McGee delivered the go-ahead heroics on a second-down pass, finding Doty on a dazzling lob over the outstretched arms of a defender to nab the 24-21 lead.

But the Seahawks still had some work to do, and it got dicey in an instant after Diemel delivered a 29-yard gem to Andrew Johnson inside the MB 35. May River was on the verge of snatching the game right back, but an unheralded Seahawk sophomore dealt the final punch to slay the Sharks.

Diemel slung a pass to Gage Duncan, but Auntay Campbell was there to knock the ball loose and force the game-clinching fumble in his first start of the year.

“We worked so hard, we just refused for this to be our last game ever,” Doty said. “I ran to the corner, I saw the ball, I knew it came down to that moment, and I captured it.”

Doty caught four passes for 51 yards and the game-winning score, while Kenny Brown added five receptions for 103 yards and a touchdown on a 44-yard pass from Cannon in the second quarter.

Jaiden Jones led May River’s offense, rushing for 176 yards and a pair of first-half touchdowns on 27 attempts.

Myrtle Beach (5-6) earned a rematch at West Florence in the second round of the playoffs next week.

Contact Charles D. Perry at 843-488-7236

Mitigating flooding has been a constant topic of conversation in the Waccamaw River watershed for the past several years. As the Waccamaw Riverkeeper, it has been a challenge to determine our role in the conversation. While advocating for protecting water quality is obvious, water quantity is a more complicated issue.

Flooding is a natural process for our rivers and can often be beneficial for the lands of the floodplain. Floodwaters carry nutrients and sediments which are deposited in the floodplain when waters recede back to their banks. Groundwater is recharged by floodwaters during inundation, providing water resources for drinking water and irrigation. Variations in water level can also be beneficial for aquatic life by creating seasonal habitats and can have positive impacts on spawning and reproduction.

Knowing that the Waccamaw is merely experiencing natural processes during flood events, it’s incredibly difficult to hear how the river has become the villain in our watershed. Even something as innocuous as “the Waccamaw watershed … had brought significant flooding to Horry County” vilifies the river and places the blame of flooding on the river itself. The Waccamaw was here long before any of us and is simply following it’s course.

What has changed in the watershed is us. As humans, we have altered the watershed and its floodplains beyond recognition. We have built roads and homes which remove the natural pervious surfaces of the watershed adding to the uncontrolled runoff flooding our rivers. We have ditched swamps to create canals which funnel stormwater directly to our rivers without slowing, spreading, and soaking as intended by the original swamps. We have inundated our floodplains not with floodwaters, but with people. And now we place the blame on the natural processes that made this area so special in the first place.

When it comes to flooding, the best way I can respond as the Waccamaw Riverkeeper is that we need to protect our natural spaces. The best way to protect communities against flooding is to use the natural flood mitigation measures that have been in place long before us. Our swamps are flood mitigation. Swamps allow for floodwaters to spread, slow, and soak. And during this process, they are able to remove pollutants dumped into our rivers from runoff. Riparian and wetland buffers can help protect areas adjacent to floodplains in the event of a massive flood event as well.

The proposed study on the Waccamaw River watershed is much needed. The last study was completed more than 40 years ago. Since then, the watershed has been changed by our actions and the hydrology of the system has been changed. Flooding has been changed. The river has been changed.

We need this study in the Waccamaw River watershed. But what we do not need is proposed projects that destroy the watersheds natural abilities to mitigate flooding. Additional ditching and canals, as proposed in Horry County’s Flood Resilience Master Plan, will not solve the problem. We have seen the negative impacts from similar past projects like Buck Creek and Crabtree Canal. We need to protect what natural landscapes we have left and not rely on human-created flood storage.

As the Waccamaw Riverkeeper, I am hopeful that we can once again recognize the Waccamaw River and its surrounding watershed for its natural benefits rather than vilify it for what we have created.

Cara Schildtknecht is the Waccamaw Riverkeeper at Winyah Rivers Alliance.