Some reports said a dam had broken to send water onto the course in Florence, S.C. as the region contends with historic rainfall. But a Board member for the community said the dam was still intact and its spillway was behaving as designed, to allow water from Lake Oakdale to flow across a portion of the course.

Water had almost completely flooded the golf course at The Palms at Oakdale Country Club in Florence, S.C. on Sunday, October 4, reported station WMBF of Myrtle Beach, S.C., as much of the state tried to contend with historic rains that had dumped nearly two feet of rain on the region in a two-day period.

The Hartsville (S.C.) Messenger, however, reported that while the failure of the dam that creates Lake Oakdale was reported by both the National Weather Service and the Florence (S.C.) County Emergency Management Division, a Board member for the community said the dam remained in place with the lake a good two to three feet below the top, and that a spillway for the dam was behaving as designed to allow lake water to flow across a portion of the golf course.

The Oakdale club and course, built in the 1960s, were taken over by new owners two years ago and given a major facelift, along with a new name. “We had to completely redo the greens, we gassed them and sterilized them all, put mini greens in, and tightened up the fairways, and t-boxes, took a lot a lot of pine trees out, opened the course up, fixed irrigation problems and put in a new pump system,” one of the new owners, Donald Brown, said at the time. The renovations had been successful in bringing in new members, it was reported.

The historic rains in South Carolina have closed a 75-mile stretch of Interstate 95 and caused Florence County to impose a county-wide, mandatory curfew, from 7 p.m. to sunrise, for non-emergency activities. Mandatory evacuation was also ordered for many neighborhoods.

With significant additional rainfall expected as the new week began, some bodies of water in the region were already several feet over flood stage.