County Looks Ahead in Preparing for Storm, Growth
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
As Anderson County hunkers down for another winter storm, Administrator Rusty Burns said the county is not only ready for snow, but for the clouds of challenge rising as the first month of the new year passes
Burns frames the county’s recent moves—from tightening development rules to extending an EMS contract—as part of a single balancing act: managing rapid population growth while making sure basic services keep pace. South Carolina is now the fastest‑growing state in the country, Burns said, and the Upstate is the fastest‑growing part of that state; Anderson, in turn, is absorbing its share of the influx.
“People are coming here,” said Burns, and the county is “putting these rules and regulations in place to try to have a better product,” not to “completely stop development.” At the same time, around 2,000 students graduate each year from Anderson’s schools, and Burns noted that county policy has to ensure they have job opportunities so that “they can stay here and that they can do well.”
Burns said the choice is not between growth and stasis but between managed growth and decline.
“You could be in a county in South Carolina where there’s nothing to do, there’s no development, and either you move or you are too poor to move, and it’s just not a good situation,” said Burns. Council’s task, he said, is to walk that line in full public view, wrestling with the same pressures that confront “every council in South Carolina in the growing areas.”
The regulatory work—development standards, infrastructure planning, land‑use decisions—becomes, in this light, another form of emergency management, an effort to head off the slow‑motion crises of sprawl, strain, and lost opportunity.
The more literal emergencies are handled by a surprisingly small crew. Anderson County’s Emergency Services Department, Burns said, consists of five full‑time employees whose “sole job is to prepare Anderson County for emergencies.”
They coordinate with hazmat teams “if we have a spill or something like that,” take part when someone drowns, and spend much of their time on “pre‑planning about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it” before a crisis arrives. A central focus is the Emergency Operations Center: the staff must know “all the players who are going to be in the emergency operations center and how they’re going to react and how they’re going to perform their tasks” when the county “spins up” the room during an event like the recent ice storm.
Burns is careful to emphasize that these are not back‑office bureaucrats. “They’re not sitting there behind the desk,” said Burns; they are “actually out doing things,” driving the county and “looking at things that we need to fix before it’s an emergency situation.”
Their mandate stretches beyond weather to what he calls “anything that you would deem an emergency,” up to and including a hypothetical problem at a nuclear reactor, where they would be “the first on the scene with all the resources.” For a county of Anderson’s size, five people are expected to imagine almost every kind of threat and assemble the response.
That work shades into the county’s medical‑emergency system, which is being quietly recalibrated as the population grows older. Council has extended its contract with Medshore, the private provider in the countywide EMS system, for one year, during which Anderson will issue a new, “very substantial” bid package and invite other providers to compete for the work.
Burns acknowledged the cost but called the system “very successful,” citing a 92 percent success rate on meeting response‑time and service goals, a number that he said came out this week, something of which county officials are “very proud.”
“Are we always tweaking that? Yes,” Burns said. “Some people criticize the arrangement, some people love it, but as long as we keep hitting 92 percent and we keep going up and the coverage is good, I think it’s a very good system,” staffed by “very qualified people.” With an aging population, the pressure to meet ambulance and emergency‑care needs will only intensify.
Around this apparatus of planning and response, Anderson is staging a year‑long conversation with its own past. At the Anderson County Museum, a “party with the past” is serving as the opening celebration of the county’s bicentennial, marking 200 years since its founding. There is a new history of Anderson County due out in book form; plans for a parade; and a collaboration between the museum and the Anderson Arts Center on projects that will use art to “recognize our past.”
“We think 200 years is important,” Burns said, adding that the county’s anniversary coincides with the 250th anniversary of the United States. “We’re going to be having a lot of things going on and hoping people will be involved and hoping people take pride and feel something about that.”
New historical monuments outlining the county’s story are also planned.
The affection Burns shows for institutions extends down to the hyperlocal. In Honea Path, the Honea Path Garden Club has marked its 85th year of service, a longevity that clearly delights him.
“Those are wonderful people. I love them,” he said, describing the club’s members as “wonderful ladies” who “do everything they can to make Honea Path a better place” and who work “so hard” at the small, persistent beautification that defines civic pride in a town. Their work, like that of the emergency‑services staff, is largely visible only in its absence—when the flowers are not tended, when the sirens come late.
In the closing moments of the interview with the Anderson Observer, Burns and the writer turned to the recent death of a mutual friend, Goetz Eaton, “somebody who had a tremendous impact on this community.” When asked how long Burns had known Eaton, he recalled more than 50 years of friendship.
