Criminal Defense Lawyer in Bluffton, SC

As Bluffton residents woke to a sunny morning, clean up efforts began to clear the various debris littering the streets. Amid the pine straw, tree limbs, Spanish moss and Palmetto fronds littering local yards and roadways, coastal tides also remained high.

There were multiple clean-up efforts around the town.

Community members came together to clean up after Idalia impacted the county with strong winds and flooding. They helped clean around local churches and neighbors were helping neighbors.

“I think they love the day,” said Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka. “It’s not hot, so there’s no reason to get in a bad mood.”

Of those who were not cleaning up fallen debris, many individuals around Old Town Bluffton were spotted enjoying the cooler than normal weather out on their golf carts and walking their dogs.

Christie McKenzie and 8-year-old Harrison McKenzie helped clean up fallen debris and palmetto fronds around Alljoy Road and the “Chisholm Cottage” as tree work was occurring behind the residence to clear and remove trees.

During his cleanup efforts, Harrison didn’t hesitate to talk to nearby community members as he continued to drag along various branches, moss and other fallen debris. His opinion on the matter, “I did not like that hurricane,” he said as he carried a “Harrison-sized” palmetto frond above his head and heaved it into the pile of other collected debris.

Luckily, there wasn’t too much damage from Idalia in Bluffton. The Bluffton Township Fire District were only called 10 times between 1 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Wednesday about fallen trees or debris, according to the Fire District’s spokesperson Stephen Combs.

“Overall we dodged a bullet and thankfully everyone escaped rather unscathed,” said Combs.

As of noon on Thursday, all trees that were blocking roads were cleared, said Combs. However, Combs noted that the fire department does not have authority in gated communities and trees may still be blocking roads in them.

“We’re blessed, but I just always feel we got to be prepared,” said Sulka. “We take the steps, thinking it’s going to be a hit.”

The National Weather Service forecasts that Idalia will be at hurricane strength as it reaches southeast Georgia late Wednesday afternoon, then becoming a tropical storm as it tracks along the South Carolina coast. NWS also stated a flood watch in southeast South Carolina will be in effect through Wednesday.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency Tuesday ahead of potential impacts caused by Idalia. McMaster warned residents should take precautions despite the state likely missing the "worst of Hurricane Idalia’s impacts."

Track the storm here:How will Hurricane Idalia impact SC?

Hurricane Idalia:Gov. McMaster declares State of Emergency for South Carolina

Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka shares letter to residents

Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka shared a letter to residents of her city.

Dear neighbors,

Thank you for preparing for Hurricane/Tropical Storm Idalia.

Historically, the busiest time for storm activity happens in this area from late August through mid-October. Unfortunately, this storm activity is following its normal pattern and timeline.

As Mayor, I hope to give you the information you need to feel informed and keep you safe. Storm preparation is a group activity, and we need you to be mindful and take some actions for the best possible outcome.

Let me assure you that Town leaders and staff are on regular calls throughout each day to keep our communities as safe as possible. As we say each year, “We may be able to put a person on the moon, however, we cannot predict a hurricane with precision.” Nature has the final word about hurricanes, their path, and timing. Information is constantly changing – the antidote to a lack of control is to control what you can and be proactive.

This storm is most likely to bring standing water, power failures and downed trees.

Hurricane Idalia: List of things to do before storm hits

Hurricane Idalia: Town of Bluffton offices closed

Hurricane Idalia: Utility Contacts

Please keep posted to the Town’s social media platforms and we will be communicating new information as we receive it. Stay safe, Bluffton!

Warmly,

Mayor Lisa Sulka

USA Today contributed to this story.

If you think the Bluffton bakery Cupcakes 2 Cakes looks charming enough to be in a Lifetime movie, you wouldn’t be alone. It seems a Lifetime film crew agrees.

The bakery, located in Berkeley Place near Cinemark Theater off Buckwalter Parkway, was used as a filming location earlier this year for an upcoming television romance titled “The Royal Bake Off.”

Here’s the plot synopsis from IMDB.com: “The rivalries of bakers Allie and Marily intensify when the royal prince of Samavia rolls into town looking for a royal baker. When Allie and the prince hit it off, it seems he might be in the market for more than just a terrific cake.”

While the release date for the movie hasn’t been announced, the owners of the Bluffton bakery are launching some romantic ideas of their own in the meantime, shifting the focus of their business from primarily a custom-order bakery to a dessert bar.

“Custom orders were great, but I wanted to increase the foot traffic coming into the building,” explained Erica Ashby of Okatie, who operates the business with her mother, Linda Ashby, and daughter, Kaiya Medrano.

“We’ve expanded our lines. We’ve expanded our hours,” Erica said.

Cupcakes 2 Cakes started as a home-based business then moved into a Berkeley Place storefront in late 2021. The bakery shut its doors temporarily in July before reopening Aug. 1 with a refreshed purpose.

“We made the decision to shut down and rebrand,” Erica said, “partly because I wanted to change the aesthetic and the feel of the business, and I wanted to change kind of the direction in which we were going.”

Now, Cupcakes 2 Cakes offers at least 13 flavors of cupcakes on any given day. Customers also can choose from 10 or so different pastries or order cake slices and even Jack Frost ice cream.

“Of course, we still have our decorated sugar cookies and then our gourmet cookies,” Erica said.

Everything is done in small batches, she explained.

“We don’t use a lot of dyes. We don’t use extracts and emulsions. We use natural flavorings for our cupcakes. ... We put out our pastries, and when we are sold out, we are sold out for the day,” she said. “We don’t keep anything in the freezer.”

The trio of bakers hasn’t stopped creating extravagant celebration cakes for birthdays, anniversaries and weddings, and they use an edible ink printer to create logo cookies for corporate events.

New to the menu, though, is an expanded lineup of drinks.

“We do more coffee, more tea, more funky drinks like our cotton candy lemonade, our Shirley Temple floats, our bourbon coffee.” The bourbon coffee is non-alcoholic; it uses coffee beans aged in whiskey barrels from The Grind Roasters.

Cupcakes 2 Cakes has started opening in the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays and soon will add a menu of special dessert and drink pairings available during that time.

“After the movies, couples, singles, family members, if they’re looking for something to do after dinner, after the movies, they can come in and grab a mocktail that we will set up to pair with a specific dessert so that it’ll be a type of an experience.”

Customers can expect the evening hours will feature the same creativity evident in the current cupcake menu.

“We try to do out-of-the-box flavors,” Erica said, listing habenero peach, elote street corn, or chicken and waffles among some recent offerings.

“We tend to do kind of a crazy flavor each week, and people love us for our creativity,” she said. Holidays are particularly fun because the bakers like to take a theme and run with it.

Right now, they are learning all they can about beverage pairings.

“We’ve been hiring mixologists and baristas, and we’ve been attending classes just to get a better understanding of the chemistry and everything that’s involved with actually making drinks,” Erica said. “We want to do something that’s the show, fancy cocktails, smoked cocktails ... creative stuff.”

What: Cupcakes 2 Cakes

Where: 108 Buckwalter Parkway, Suite 2C, Bluffton

Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Phone: 843-415-5678

Website: cupcakes2cakes.com

This story was originally published August 17, 2023, 4:00 AM.

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Residents of South Carolina Lowcountry counties breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday after Tropical Storm Idalia roared through on Wednesday, leaving flooded roads and some people without power.

High winds and inches of rain from Idalia bombarded Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton counties Wednesday evening.

The highest wind gust that was seen in Beaufort County during the storm Wednesday was 66 mph, the National Weather Service reported, adding that wind speeds at Battery Point in the Beaufort area peaked at 57 mph, and the Beaufort Marine Corps Airspace reported wind gusts of 49 mph.

Rainfall in the Beaufort, Jasper, and Hampton County areas was measured at 2 to 8 inches, the NWS said.

As the inches of rain came down, nearby water sources swelled causing flooding in the Lowcountry.

Several roads and neighborhoods in Hampton County remained flooded Thursday, and Hampton County Emergency Management Director Susanne Peeples urged caution when traveling. The Savannah River area had a flood warning that extended into the afternoon.

Power outages in Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton counties

Tray Hunter, marketing director at Palmetto Electric, reported that around 9,531 Beaufort County customers lost power during Idalia. In Jasper County, 3,121 residents were without power and 1,628 were without power in Hampton County. Hunter said that Palmetto Electric employees were able to restore power to all customers just after midnight going into Thursday, Aug. 31.

As of 9:15 a.m., Peeples said that 319 Dominion customers around the county were still without power. Some of these are "major outages," said Peeples, and several roads need to be cleared in order to repair the outages, so it was likely to be midday or later before power could be restored to some areas.

At 7 a.m. Thursday, Dominion had more than 6,000 customers statewide without power, with 978 of those customers in Jasper County, Peeples said.

Jasper County shelter closes

Jasper County Emergency Services, in an email, said that it had closed the shelter early Thursday morning that had been opened as Hurricane Idalia bore down on the state.

"Jasper County Emergency Services is thankful for minimal impacts to our community," the release said.

The shelter had opened for those who needed a place to go during the hurricane. Volunteers worked Wednesday morning to close the shelter down with the help of several local agencies.

Schools and county office closings and reopenings

All Hampton County offices will reopen at 8 a.m. Friday. Hampton County School District (the public schools) were already scheduled to be closed for Friday and Monday due to the Labor Day holiday weekend, so they will reopen on Tuesday as scheduled.

Jasper County and Beaufort County schools will resume classes on Friday, Sept. 1.

When did Idalia make landfall?

Idalia made landfall at about 7:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday near Keaton Beach in Florida's Big Bend. The storm came ashore southeast of Tallahassee as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.

Idalia remained a hurricane as moved north, northeast into Georgia before hitting the South Carolina Lowcountry as a tropical storm.

How big was Idalia?

The storm spanned nearly 350 miles across, an area about the size of Colorado, which measures 380 miles across.

Satellite imagery captured Aug. 30-31, by NASA GOES East satellites, shows Idalia breaking up as it moved into the Atlantic. Hurricane Franklin can also be seen in the same imagery as the storms draw closer together.

USA Today contributed to this report.

BLUFFTON, S.C. (WTOC) - The Lowcountry is home to many flavors of cuisine, from local Gullah Geechee cooking to modern fusion restaurants.

Those flavors continue to expand as the area grows.

Many of those who have tried Chef Bernards’s food say it will take you on a cultural journey. He started in a food truck to now owning a full-blown restaurant.

“The whole journey started through the pandemic, I thought I had got my dream job in Chicago but the whole world shut down, it had me really contemplate what to do next.”

And the decision led him to South Carolina to be with family.

“So you know I made up my mind to come down to Bluffton, then I knew that this was a project that I definitely gonna do.”

During that time, he says he felt the need to expand people’s taste buds, so he started a food truck.

“I’m using my vision of the origin of our foods in my opinion from West Africa through the Caribbean to America.”

But he soon realized he wanted to bring something bigger than a truck to the community.

“Nobody is doing this flavor palette; I want to be bold I want to tell a story I want to showcase the love I have for cuisine. We are very passionate about what we are doing in bringing in a level of complexity and love to what we do. I think that there needs to be more places like that in Bluffton.”

And that is why a new restaurant he co-owns and cooks for is open for business in downtown Bluffton.

“Okan means heart in soul in the language of Yoruba. Yoruba is the first language of West Africa so I thought while I am trying to represent our roots and pathways of the forced migration, we should use a language that was spoken then.”

But he says he hopes the food talks for itself once people get a taste.

”Jollof rice you can’t have west African representation without Jollof rice and many other things cashew curry. Cashew curry has been one of our biggest hits.”

”Everything is done through food, so I am definitely trying to teach people a little bit of a history lesson. Rice was the cash crop rice if it hadn’t been for forced migration maybe rice wouldn’t be in this country. Different things like that. Just showcasing those little nuggets is my goal. Now, if you learn fantastic, if you don’t you had a fantastic meal so it works either way.”

Chef Bernard says that the restaurant will be open Wednesday through Sunday.

For more information visit their website here.

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