Wedding & Event Venue Near Allendale, SC.

ALLENDALE, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Allendale Superintendent Dr. Margaret Gilmore is retiring after 40 years in education.

After years of trying to revive a failing school system, the state took over and appointed Gilmore to save the district five years ago.

Her journey ends this week and as she enters retirement and the community is feeling optimistic about the future.

“I will die on that. The school was sinking and she turned it around. I just don’t know what we’re going to do without you,” said a bus driver.

When Gilmore took over, Allendale County was in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state.

Community member Kathy Tharin said, “Our school system was going through a very difficult time at the time that Dr. Gilmore arrived. We were at the bottom of the list of all of the academic scales.”

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After years of hardships, Gilmore stepped in as an outsider from Atlanta, appointed by the State School Superintendent.

“Allendale County doesn’t like outsiders. They don’t take kindly to outsiders,” said Gilmore.

Tharin said: “We were skeptical, but we didn’t know her. But she allowed us to get to know her. And to build that trust, and to listen to what she was trying to do for us. And it showed because Dr. Gilmore spent 80 to 85 percent of her time with the kids in the classroom.”

The road to meeting milestones began with recruiting.

“Number one is to recruit and retain highly effective teachers, and leaders, especially teachers to stand in front of our scholars and educate our scholars was extremely important to me,” said Gilmore.

When she arrived, the graduation rate was in the low 70s. It’s climbed as high as 87.9 percent during her tenure.

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Now, she feels it’s time to shift her focus back to her family.

“I leave every Sunday evening at four o’clock from Atlanta, which is four and a half hours from Allendale and I travel back to Allendale so that I can be on campus Monday morning at 7:30 a.m.,” said Gilmore.

The community wants a new Superintendent just as dedicated.

Tharin said: “They need to consider what she’s done and how she’s done it to make sure that we get an informed and qualified person to fill her size 20 shoes.”

The district is still under state control. The State Superintendent’s Office says they plan to have a new superintendent in place by early fall.

While Allendale has been improving, there are still many milestones that take time to reach before control can be given back to the board of education.

In the meantime, Angela Jacobs will take over as the Interim Administrator.

Copyright 2023 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.

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Higher test positivity rates are a sign that many infections are not reported — even if they are tested for at home. This results in a more severe undercount of cases. The number of hospitalized patients with Covid is a more reliable measure because testing is more consistent in hospitals. Read more about the data.

In data for South Carolina, The Times primarily relies on reports from the state. The state releases new data once a week. It released new data daily until June 12, 2021, and new data all weekdays until March 15, 2022. The state reports cases and deaths based on a person’s permanent or usual residence.

The Times has identified reporting anomalies or methodology changes in the data.

The tallies on this page include probable and confirmed cases and deaths.

Confirmed cases and deaths, which are widely considered to be an undercount of the true toll, are counts of individuals whose coronavirus infections were confirmed by a molecular laboratory test. Probable cases and deaths count individuals who meet criteria for other types of testing, symptoms and exposure, as developed by national and local governments.

Governments often revise data or report a single-day large increase in cases or deaths from unspecified days without historical revisions, which can cause an irregular pattern in the daily reported figures. The Times is excluding these anomalies from seven-day averages when possible. For agencies that do not report data every day, variation in the schedule on which cases or deaths are reported, such as around holidays, can also cause an irregular pattern in averages. The Times uses an adjustment method to vary the number of days included in an average to remove these irregularities.

ALLENDALE COUNTY, S.C. — A large, dangerous tornado is confirmed to have touched down in Allendale County, South Carolina, but the full scope of the damage it caused is still being evaulated.

The twister was seen on radar around 4 p.m. Eastern Tuesday, and quickly, there was high concern. Forecaster could see a strong area of rotation with the system, and the debris that the storm was creating could be seen on Doppler radar.

RELATED: Tornado warnings expire in the Midlands after large outbreak of severe weather in South Carolina

That prompted the National Weather Service to issue this rare statement, a tornado emergency: "A Tornado Emergency is in affect for Allendale, SC and headed toward Sycamore, SC. THIS IS A LIFE THREATENING SITUATION!!"

Videos quickly surfaced on social media showing the large twister on the ground. At present, it's not known exactly how large or how fast the wind speeds were. That evaluation will come later by National Weather Service officials.

RELATED: Here's the latest updates on tornadoes, storm damage in the Midlands

The South Carolina Emergency Management Division said they have one confirmed injury but that one is non life-threatening. An earlier report of a storm-related death appears to have been inaccurate, according to the agency.

Images of downed trees and power lines and other damage showed some of destruction. Emergency teams from both the county and state officials were sent to assess the situation.

Edisto Electric Cooperative, which serves that area, confirmed the winds had damaged parts of our distribution system in that area, including at least three substations. Customers were urged to call 1-800-433-3292 to report outages.

The Allendale County School District confirmed there will be no class on Wednesday due to the damage.

A rapidly moving cluster of thunderstorms was responsible for the severe weather outbreak. In anticipation of severe weather, the Storm Prediction Center has placed the southern Midlands in an enhanced risk of severe weather, and that turned out to be the area that saw the worst of the storms.

Historically, South Carolina's greatest risk for tornadoes is the month of April.

ALLENDALE — The sheriff of Allendale County withdrew thousands in cash with no explanation. The clerk of court paid thousands in Christmas bonuses to staff, and to herself, without reporting them to the IRS. And the tiny, rural county has at least 45 bank accounts, some in individuals’ names, according to findings in a new forensic audit.

The audit, by Burkett Burkett & Burkett of West Columbia, examined several years of financial records and cited a range of severe accounting deficiencies that left the county at serious risk of fraud. County Council members heard details of the new report on June 29.

The county lacks checks and balances in its accounting practices, has issued payments without invoices and hasn’t kept a general ledger — one of the most basic of accounting tools — for the past 13 years, the auditors found.

Council members and the county administrator pledged to make improvements and cited changes already underway. They sought the audit after complaining that the county treasurer, who is elected, was not providing them basic information about revenue, among other concerns. The treasurer, Gerzell Chaney, resigned two weeks ago, just days after state lawmakers wrote to Gov. Henry McMaster urging him to take action.

William Goodson, who took over as county administrator in late 2019, has been working to address the escalating crisis since. “This is not a complicated county to run. This is a small business. We do not need 45 bank accounts,” he said.

Ronald Burkett, the auditing firm’s president, presented the audit to council. He said he couldn’t determine if employees had committed financial crimes but pointed to inept accounting that diminished hope of detecting it.

Among top concerns: Sheriff Tom Carter took out a “drug fund” account in his personal name and did not disclose it to the county administrator.

“I can’t imagine why you would have an account (for county funds) in an individual’s name,” Burkett said.

In 2020, more than $11,000 was deposited into sheriff’s “drug fund” account, including one deposit for $10,565 labeled simply “drug money.” Yet, the deposit wasn’t linked to any court proceedings, the audit says.

Carter also personally withdrew thousands of dollars from the account, the audit says. He took out nine cash withdrawals totaling $5,095 but provided no explanation of why he was withdrawing $3,695 of that money, the audit says.

“There was no approval process for these cash withdrawals, no dual control, and no reporting to the County Administrator,” the audit says. “This is a material weakness and creates the potential for fraud.”

Carter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The audit’s revelations come amid a decadelong parade of scandals involving South Carolina sheriffs. Roughly one in three South Carolina counties have seen their sheriffs run afoul of the law.

All told, 14 sheriffs have been accused of violating laws they were sworn to uphold. A fifteenth, this one in Orangeburg, funneled public funds into a bogus credit union to buy a $72,000 mobile home.

The audit is also another blow to a county that has long struggled with soaring poverty, failing schools and government mismanagement. In the past five years, the state took over the county’s low-performing school district for the second time while three of Allendale’s public officials went to jail on embezzlement charges.

All this occurred after the county lost its lone newspaper, the weekly Allendale Sun, in 2015 — depriving residents of a key agent to scrutinize the actions of government officials.

Time and again in South Carolina, a lack of scrutiny and financial controls has led to allegations of mismanagement or worse, The Post and Courier has detailed this year in its Uncovered series. The newspaper has partnered with 16 news outlets to expose misconduct and questionable government actions across the Palmetto State, and explore the roots of those problems.

Beyond the Sheriff’s Office, the Allendale County audit shows far-reaching risks given a lack of checks and balances and a serious lack of accounting across departments:

• Officials have kept no master list of capital assets.

• Payments for women’s jail renovations were made without invoices.

• The county clerk alone has nine bank accounts and is the sole person receiving and distributing money in them. She paid $13,195 in Christmas bonuses to her staff, including herself, out of a discretionary fund in 2020 but didn’t account for them in the county payroll system or report them to the IRS on W-2s. The clerk, Elaine Sabb, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s been going on and going on,” Burkett said. “All of this leads to potential for fraud.”

Tony Bartelme and Glenn Smith contributed to this report from Charleston.

ALLENDALE COUNTY, S.C. (WACH) — On Tuesday evening, tornadoes ripped through parts of South Carolina and the rest of the Southeast.

The National Weather Service has already confirmed several in the Midlands.

LOCAL FIRST | Tornado Watch dropped across the SC Midlands Wednesday evening

“Everything’s gone. We have to rebuild," said Ronald Scott, who owns a mobile home outside of Allendale.

When the sun rose on a new day, everyone stepped outside to a strange, new scene.

"I've never seen anything like this," added Sarah Batson. Her grandmother lives along Highway 278 near town.

Along highway 278, buildings were ripped apart. Houses covered with fallen trees.

Sarah's grandmother is 90 years old. She's spent two thirds of her life in the same spot and the same house.

Tuesday evening, she weathered the tornado from inside her home as trees crashed down around her.

"She had a stand with a lot of angels on it and none of it was damaged. Those ceramic angels. So, she said it was a little miracle that she was safe through all of it," described Sarah.

LOCAL FIRST | SC ranks top tier in National Emergency Preparedness report

In the more rural areas, the damage was more intense.

A mobile home was flipped off of it's foundation - shattered on the ground - and debris spread for hundreds of feet to the tree line behind.

The owner was only given minutes of warning, but thankfully he wasn't home.

"When they tell you to get out, get out," said Ronald Scott, the owner.

Down the road, a tornado caught a man while he was inside his home.

His niece now taking stock of the damage.

"He was in the house, relaxing, and the storm came and knocked it off the block," explained Harriet Willams, the homeowner's niece. "He had enough nerve to jump out the window. I probably would have had a heart attack."

Some of the worst damage was just next door.

Two mobile homes were ripped off the ground and flown into the trees - still stuck there a day later.

Emergency crews knew that the owner, Barbara Gill, was still there the night of the storm.

The problem, they couldn't find her.

"I started calling her name. Barbara, Barbara. She finally reached out and responded back," described Eugene Capers. Eugene went around and checked on everyone in the neighborhood shortly after the storms.

The owner of the homes was found in her car taking shelter.

She was surrounded on all sides by the remnants of her home. Most things covering the ground, but a good chunk hanging in the trees.

Emergency crews were able to get her out of the car, but she was still in a state of shock.

"She didn't know nothing, what happened, what went on," added Eugene.

She was sent to a hospital to treat her injuries.

15 other families were helped by the American Red Cross.

Still no official rating on these tornadoes.

But, for a second night in a row, tornadoes a concern once again.