Area News

By JENN CAUSEY tribjenn@tabor-loris.com     Editor’s note: Tabor-Loris Tribune stands by its reporting in the July 21 story criticized during Tuesday’s Loris City Council meeting. Charlie Todd was contacted prior to publication of that story, and was quoted in it. Neither Todd nor anyone else has contacted this newspaper about the story in the seven…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Students at Williams Township School will all be in virtual classrooms beginning Friday, less than a week after South Columbus High School, just south on US 701, began the same practice, the Columbus County Schools announced Thursday.      Distance learning will be in effect at least through Sept. 10 at Williams Township.…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Distance learning is growing quickly in the Horry Schools, barely two weeks after students returned to classrooms, with Loris Middle the third of the county’s schools to go virtual effective Thursday.      Loris Middle currently has 16 active student COVID-19 cases, with 260 students in quarantine, data from the school district dashboard…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Nearly nine months after vaccines to protect against COVID-19 became available a fourth surge of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the area reached levels not seen since winter this weekend, with 835 cases and 7 deaths recorded for Horry County, another 149 cases and 2 deaths in Columbus, where the population…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Students at South Columbus High School will be home next week, the campus shut down due to a COVID-19 outbreak.      Staff will be on campus, conducting virtual lessons and isolated to their classrooms, SCHS Assistant Principal Michelle Simmons said.      (Corrects initial reporting that students and staff will be home.)      Students…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Sterling Koonce expressed real surprise minutes after The Tabor Medal was placed around his neck as the 2021 Diamond Anniversary banquet of the Greater Tabor City Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.      “When Marylou was reading the presentation, she said the winner moved to Chadbourn when he was 7,” Koonce said. “I moved…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      With nearly two weeks of data from high school students on Columbus County Schools’ campuses showing significant COVID-19 impacts, the Columbus County Board of Education Friday morning reversed its previous position and ordered a mask mandate for the district effective Monday, Aug. 23.      That mandate takes effect on the first day…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      A communications cable was cut between Whiteville and Lake Waccamaw Thursday morning, disabling Internet and cell phone service for much of the county, and forcing the routing of 911 calls to an adjacent county.      Beginning before 9 a.m., the outage also impacted Columbus County offices, and it was nearly 2 p.m.…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      Improvements totaling nearly $2.5 million for RJ Corman Railroad track in Columbus and Horry counties have been approved through the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Freight Rail and Rail Crossing Safety Improvement program (FRRCSI).      Twelve short line railroads and the North Carolina Ports Authority will be making improvements as a result of…

By DEUCE NIVEN tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com      “It’s rough,” Chief Gary Buley of the Loris Police Department says of having one-quarter of his force sidelined by COVID-19.”      One of the three officers who have tested positive for the coronavirus is “very sick,” Buley said, and receiving care in a hospital.      Neither of the other two have shown severe…