Moving Company in Columbia

A tropical system off the coast of Florida may become a tropical depression over the next couple of days.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Seasonably hot, dry weather is expected for the weekend. Moisture will begin to increase Monday ahead of a cold front. A few isolated showers will be possible Monday. Showers and storms are expected Tuesday.

Temperatures started off pleasant this morning. Lows were in the upper 60s and lower 70s under mostly clear skies. The Columbia airport reported a low of 72 degrees.

The weekend will be mostly dry and hot. A stray shower or storm cannot be ruled out in the extreme western part of the Midlands, but widespread rain is not expected. High temperatures today will be in the lower 90s for most of the area.

Air quality levels will still be in the moderate range across the Midlands. Smoke from fires in the West will still be over the Southeast today. This will continue to produce a haze to the sky and reducing air quality in spots. The smoke should decrease tomorrow.

Sunday will be mostly sunny and seasonably hot. High temperatures will be in the lower 90s. Again, no widespread rain is expected, but a stray shower or storm could form in some locations.

Monday will be hot and humid. High temperatures will be in the lower to middle 90s. An isolated shower or storm will be possible, especially in the southern and eastern half of the Midlands.

The best chance for rain over the next seven days will be Tuesday. Scattered showers and storms are expected. High temperatures will be a little cooler with the clouds and rain in place.

Tracking the Tropics:

Showers and thunderstorms have increased in association with an area of low pressure located about 200 miles east of Daytona Beach.

Buoy observations indicate that surface pressures have been falling close to the center of this system. The associated shower and thunderstorm activity remains disorganized and located primarily south and east of the center.

Environmental conditions are forecasted to become a bit more favorable for development, and a tropical depression could form over the next day or so while the low meanders offshore of the Florida Peninsula.

Interests in Florida should continue to monitor the progress of this system.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - After her own dog’s death, a Columbia woman is warning other pet owners of the danger posed by the sago palm plant, an alert echoed by a Columbia-area veterinarian.

Last month, Brianna Cox said her dog, Willy, died after eating part of a sago palm, a shrub-like plant that is toxic for dogs, cats, and horses, according to the ASPCA, and common in South Carolina.

“He started showing symptoms almost immediately after he ate it,” Cox said. “Vomiting, excessive thirst, and lots of drooling.”

Within 12 hours of ingesting the plant, Cox said Willy’s liver was failing.

“It’s definitely scary, especially with how prevalent they are in the Midlands and Lowcountry,” Cox said.

Dr. Wendy King, a veterinarian with Spears Creek Veterinary Clinic in Elgin, said all parts of sago palms can be toxic to dogs, but especially the seeds, which look like small, reddish-orange balls.

“If you see your dog eating the sago palm, you can obviously get it out of their mouth,” King said. “You can actually give them hydrogen peroxide to make them vomit if you catch them within a window. If it’s been more than 30 minutes, vomiting’s not going to help, and even if you make them vomit, I really think you should contact your veterinarian because it’s so toxic.”

King said symptoms typically start with vomiting and diarrhea and can worsen from there to eventually cause liver failure, like in Willy’s case. If 24 hours have passed from the time the dog ingested part of the plant, she said the animal will likely need to be hospitalized and treated, though that may be necessary before that timeframe.

From there, the prognosis can be grim. The ASPCA reports up to 75% of cases in which a dog ingests sago palm end in death.

“There are some dogs, that their whole life, they want to chew on things,” King said. “So you have the dogs that are chewers and the ones that aren’t, and the ones that are chewers are the ones that you’re really going to have to watch out for.”

Considering the difficulty of stopping many dogs, especially puppies, from eating items that are not food, King advises dog owners that the best way to avoid their animals consuming sago palm is to not plant it in their yards, adding that other types of palms are not poisonous for dogs.

She also reminds them to be on the lookout on walks if sago palms might be planted in their neighborhood, including if their neighbors have been doing yard work.

“Sago palm leaves are something that’s pretty common for them to cut the ugly, unsightly leaves off, and they’ll set them by the street, and the dogs can be interested in something new and looking at it and eating it,” she said.

The superintendent for the City of Columbia’s Forestry and Beautification Department said they only plant sago palms in places like medians, where dogs likely will not be walking because they are aware of how toxic they are.

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They are encouraging students to get vaccinated to help battle the coronavirus and the Delta variant.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Officials with the University of South Carolina revealed their plan on how they hope to keep the coronavirus under control as student come back to campus for the upcoming fall semester.

The school released their COVID Mitigation Strategy Friday. Fall classes at the school begin on August 19th.

“We’ve been working with numerous medical experts and university officials with a commitment to creating a plan and making decisions that not only benefit individuals on campus, but it’s to benefit the health and safety of the entire campus and the surrounding communities,” said Dr. Jason Stacy, the interim director of University Health Services.

The interim health director confirmed the Delta variant has been detected on campus. They are encouraging students to get vaccinated to help battle the coronavirus and the Delta variant.

“That pushes us into what we’ve been working towards on campus, is really trying to incentivize and help our students get vaccinated,” explained Dr. Stacy. “We have ample supply on campus. We have been giving them out all along through the summer, giving them out to students that are coming to campus and even to some of their parents when they’re coming to orientation.”

National and state statistics show people in the age range of college students are the least likely to have been vaccinated at this point. That's why the school is working on starting a “Garnet and Vaxxed” incentive program to encourage more student to get vaccinated. While they haven’t released those incentives at the moment, school officials believe it will be one's students are excited about.

So far, there are 12,500 fully vaccinated students at the school.

The university will be requiring testing for faculty, staff and students when they come back to campus. Those who will be living in the dorms of the Greek Village will need to supply the school with either a completed vaccine card, a negative test or a passed prior positive within the last 90 days. The same rules apply for students living off campus as well as faculty and staff.

Masks will be required in the University Health Services areas and the counseling center. Masks will also be required for transportation. Masks are recommended in indoor settings where physical distancing is not possible.

The school will also continue to follow DHEC and CDC guidelines when they isolate those cases that occur on campus.

Compared to last Fall, there will be more students on campus. The school is planning on having more of a normal start of the year with in-person learning.

“The University of South Carolina is committed to having a safe and healthy campus. In this past year, we developed some of the best mitigation strategies in the country, perhaps possibly in the world,” said Dr. Stephen Cutler, the dean of the College of Pharmacy and the interim provost for the university, “We were one of only five universities to develop the saliva-based assay last summer.”

The school used the saliva-based testing to open the University of South Carolina. In the fall semester of last year, the school had about a four percent positivity rate and in the spring semester had about 1.4 percent.

The testing has been shared with other schools in the state and across the country.

“We also employed many other strategies. We had face coverings, we had hand sanitizer throughout the campus, the university health system afforded wonderful support to faculty, staff, students,” explained Dr. Cutler.

With people being able to receive the coronavirus vaccine during the spring semester, school believes it was impactful and helped limit the spread of the virus.

“These strategies allowed us to provide a very safe environment for our university and for the community and also for the state,” said Dr. Cutler. “We will continue to track the virus, we’ll monitor it. We do know that there are variants that we have to pay attention to. One of the things we expect to see is the natural evolution of a virus, is that we will see a spike perhaps in the first week or two when we return. But we will employ these mitigation strategies, dampen it down just as we did last fall as well as at the beginning of the spring semester.”

Some teens in Columbia are now employed and prepped for success in the job field after a 4-week program with Columbia Urban League and Publix Super Market.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — On Friday, some teens in Columbia got employed and prepped for success in the job field after a 4-week program. The free program prepared teens for success in an apprenticeship for ages 16 to 19 years old.

The partnership taught the teens how to be prepared for the workforce, as well as soft and technical skills. At the end of the program, students were given the opportunity to put those skills to the test during an interview with Publix, where students were offered official job opportunities.

"I have a job and I am able to get some workforce experience, and gain some skills, and be able to plan out my future," said 17-year-old Jayda Yarborough. "What I want to do, what goals I want to achieve. I’m so happy because I’m able to gain the skills and able to work a job I really want to work with. Publix is something I want to work with because my heart and soul is with them."

Other students were also offered job opportunities, as well, like 17-year-old Hannah Whatley and Malcom Scott.

"It’s such an amazing opportunity," Whatley said. "I am very happy, I’m very blessed, I’m very grateful and I can’t wait to get started!”

Scott said he was able to learn good communication skills, eye contact, not being scared and having confidence. He said he feels accomplished after the program.

"I'm just happy for this opportunity," Scott said. "They taught us a lot of skills that I'm going to need in the future. And to get this opportunity, this job, even with the interviews, they helped us with that too.”

For 16-year-old, Tatiana Fitts, she was able to get hired during her first day.

"Some takeaways I have from this program, always do your research, always practice before you get an interview, and have hope in yourself and don’t be shy or scared," Fitts said. "It's been a crazy experience, It was really good for me, I really learned a lot, I've been through a lot, and I had a great outcome.

Cheryl Humphries is the Executive Assistant for the Columbia Urban League. She said this program teaches students a lot of life skills to be able to succeed. She said for some, it's life changing.

"So many of our young people today are being lost by the waist side," Humphries said. "It’s been proven that workforce development not only helps build their character but to allow them to be productive members of society."

She said this is the first time the organization did a program to this extent, and she's happy to see the results.

Latarsha Melvin is the Manager of Associate Diversity and Inclusion at Publix. She told News 19, she hopes to keep this partnership with the league and continue to hold personal growth programs in the future.

"It’s just a win-win for them, it’s a win for us, and it’s a win for our community," Melvin said. "So it’s important for us to continue our partnership that we do have with them and I'm just looking forward to do other things in the future. We've always had a positive relationship with Columbia Urban League."

Melvin said students were taught how to bag, stock, and cashier during this past week.

James T. McLawhorn said the program sends a message out to other employers.

"This is a great opportunity for youth development," McLawhorn said. "They trained, and now they're getting job opportunities. It's a win-win for everybody. I also think it sends out a message to employers. The Urban League is the place to come if you want a productive workforce."

Melvin said the company has a tuition reimbursement program for their college staff members. She also said they are able to transfer to a different location when they go to college, if there is one near their school.

The program was free for students and was funded and sponsored by Boeing, Midlands Technical College, and Apprenticeship Carolina.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - After a 16-month hiatus, Lula Drake Wine Parlour is opening its doors and serving loyal patrons once again.

WIS caught up with the head sommelier and owner of Lula Drake, Tim Gardner, ahead of the bar’s grand reopening.

“When we shut down on March 15th, we knew it was gonna be a long haul,” Gardner said. “We didn’t know it was going to be 16 months.”

In those 16 long, difficult months, Tim Gardner said he had to get creative to survive.

“We sold thousands of bottles,” Gardner said. “Seeing high-end burgundies and Bordeaux’s and all these crazy natural wines fly out the door was great. It was kind of sad, but it was also something that helped us survive.”

That cash flow would turn out to be Gardner’s savings account – allowing him to reopen his doors in July 2021, after shutting the operation down on March 15, 2020.

“I opened Lula Drake because I was very passionate about wine and because I had worked over in Europe and wanted to bring that experience here,” Gardner said. “So to see that slip away was gut-wrenching.”

The spaces between 1633-1635 Main Street, according to Historic Columbia, were built in 1865 and remodeled in 1937. It was rehabilitated in 2015, ahead of Lula Drake’s initial emergence onto the Main Street scene. It’s a corridor that hosts a plethora of locally-owned and grown businesses.

The Lula Drake space has been so many things over the years. Once it was a bank, then a department store – and now home to a wine bar prioritizing natural, sustainable European wines.

If you ask Historic Columbia’s John Sherrer, he’ll tell you businesses like Lula Drake are important to the fabric of the downtown district.

”You have a community that has been enriched because of all of these personal investments all these individuals have made,” Sherrer said.

Sherrer said these unique venues have been transformed into locally-grown investments for a reason. It dates back to 2012 when a National Register District was established there, allowing investors to leverage tax credits for preserving historic buildings.

But when the pandemic hit, many of those businesses and investors only had themselves to fall back on.

”Commercial equipment cannot sit for a year,” Gardner said. “We had plumbing issues. We had all kinds of issues and then we lost our chef two weeks before we were going to reopen. We had to retool from the ground up.”

While some businesses shut down completely, others emerged for the first time.

A hop, skip and a block south on Main Street is Alpha One Fitness. The gym opened in November 2020.

”We thought that was the best time to do it,” said co-founder Neal Boozer. “It allowed us to work on the kinks and by the time things got back to normal we would be good to go and ready to run.”

The resurgence of the Saturday morning Soda City crowd and the proximity to student-specific housing like The Hub made it easy, he said, to market the new gym.

”You have to be resilient in what you do,” Boozer said. “You have to be obsessed with what you’re doing.”

That’s a feeling Gardner shares. It’s fair to say he is obsessed with his love of wine, invested in the success of the business and was clearly willing to weather the storm.

It has been a rollercoaster, Gardner said, but he’s happier than ever to welcome longtime patrons back to their barstools.

”My landlords helped us survive,” Gardner said. “They gave us a break on rent and encouraged us to keep the word out there that Lula Drake was coming back and that meant everything.”

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