Condition of roads means residents worry about emergency vehicle response time, everyday trips
There's a red-dirt road running half a mile into the woods where water gathers in every crevice after rainfall, mud congeals over stones, lethargic-looking trees stretch their limbs over it, poking one another, and pregnant cats find haven amid the bumpy terrain that's long, narrow and resembles a vein, crooked, winding and unpredictable, so much so that more than one car is a clot.
If the drivers' schedules line up too well and their comings and goings collide, their cars just about do, too, on this narrow, red-dirt road. There's only room for one, and the only thing more difficult than driving forward on this road is driving backward.
And this, this relatively treacherous journey from one's front door to the street sign, is an everyday to-do for the residents living on Shakemia Road in Sumter County, as it is for the residents of numerous other rural private roads in the area.
And for some, it's not so bad. If you drive one of those big trucks with chunky tires and four-wheel drive, perhaps it's sort of fun getting to off-road daily, but for others who perhaps drive a sedan, commuting might be more difficult.
Sixty-five-year-old Sandra Webb has lived on Shakemia Road for most of her life. She remembers walking to the end of it in her youth with whom she calls her sisters but who are actually life-long friends and neighbors.
She said they'd walk to the end to meet up with folks, whether boys or friends, and that those boys or friends sometimes said they wouldn't expect that anyone actually lives at the end of Shakemia Road because when looking at it from Peach Orchard Road, which is paved and busier, the woods seem to swallow Shakemia, and that veiny red-dirt road looks as though its end is nearer than it actually is.
But Webb and her family and life-long friends do and have lived at the end of Shakemia Road for a lifetime. It's home. And while Webb said she once declared she'd one day leave that road and never come back, she is back and here to stay, now in her mid-60s with mobility issues and doctors appointments on the schedule to hopefully figure out why she doesn't walk so well anymore.
Webb added Shakemia Road is home to a lot of folks whose health isn't so good anymore and that the condition of their street worries them, adding that emergency services take too long to get there.
"We had a fire back here the year before last," Webb said. "And it destroyed one trailer back here and my brother's trailer was here, and [the fire] damaged the side. It was scary. Lord, have mercy."
Packages get sent back to the post office, trips to the car mechanic are frequent, draining wallets, while potholes do just the opposite - they don't drain, and Shakemia Road residents persevere, still worried for the day when they have to dial 9-1-1 and persevere some more while EMS, fire or police response times fare with the condition of their street.
Additionally, the "wheels" part of Meals on Wheels can't fare with it either, Webb said. She has to meet the delivery people from the nonprofit at the end of her road to get her food.
Shakemia Road is and always has been a private road. So it is not Sumter County's responsibility to scrape and maintain it.
"I don't understand what that got to do with it," Webb said. "Private road people pay taxes just like public road people pay taxes."
Some Sumter County officials are starting to think like that, too.
Talk of possible solutions to the issues private dirt-road locals are facing took up a large portion of the March 26 Sumter County Council meeting.
Public Works is limited on what it can do because a road cannot be considered public unless it meets standards set by the South Carolina Department of Transportation, and Public Works can only service public roads, and getting roads up to those standards and making them public to be able to service them is pricey.
"Sumter County Council is aware of the existence of private dirt surface roads within the County that serve as the sole means of ingress and egress by many of its citizens/taxpayers," read a draft of a proposed ordinance to address the problem from Councilman Carlton B. Washington of District 1. "Sumter County Council is also aware that emergency medical, rescue, law enforcement and other county vehicles cannot immediately and fully access many of these roads to render essential services and lifesaving measures to which all residents are entitled."
He proposes that "minimum maintenance measures" be implemented on Sumter County roads that are the sole means of access to one or more occupied primary residences, where the distance from the closest residence to the nearest public road is more than 300 feet and where access to the residence(s) is determined to be impassable to emergency response vehicles, equipment and their personnel.
This issue will likely appear on the April 9 agenda, but there is not a clear timeline on when or if a solution can be reached.
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