In September 2018, the Waccamaw River rose past 20 feet through downtown Conway. That broke a flood record that had stood since 1928 by more than four feet. It also wasn't an isolated event: Conway absorbed three catastrophic floods in a four-year stretch, racking up an estimated $4.2 million in damage to city property alone.
None of that touches South Carolina's liability requirements. But it has everything to do with how comprehensive coverage, the part of a policy that pays for flood damage to your own vehicle, gets priced for a car garaged in the county seat of Horry County.
A County Seat Built on the River
Conway grew up along the Waccamaw River, and the historic Riverwalk downtown is part of what gives the city its identity as the Horry County seat. That same river geography is why Waccamaw Drive, a road that runs for about a mile right alongside the water, has seen residents stranded and leaving by boat during the worst flood events.
A city built this close to a slow-draining coastal plain river was always going to have a flood story. Conway's has just been an unusually active one in recent years.
Three Floods in Four Years
Conway dealt with major flooding in 2015, again in 2016, and then the record-breaking crest tied to Hurricane Florence in 2018. Three catastrophic events in a four-year window is the kind of pattern that shows up in an actuarial table, not just a local news archive.
Insurers pricing comprehensive coverage in the area are working from a documented, repeated record, not a single freak storm. That's a different risk profile than a city that floods once a generation.
The City Is Fighting Back With Land, Not Just Levees
The Conway Conservation Corridor has set aside roughly 152 acres of Waccamaw River floodplain, conserved specifically to absorb future floodwater rather than let it push into downtown streets. The corridor doubles as a pedestrian connection between downtown Conway and Coastal Carolina University.
That kind of mitigation can help over time, but it doesn't erase a flood record that insurers have already priced in. A quote built on the last decade's claims history doesn't reset the moment a conservation project breaks ground.
What Conway Drivers Are Required to Carry
South Carolina sets a 25/50/25 liability floor statewide: $25,000 in bodily injury coverage per person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 in property damage. Conway drivers carry the same number as drivers in Columbia or Charleston.
Uninsured motorist coverage at those same 25/50 limits is bundled into every policy sold in the state, since South Carolina skips a PIP mandate and relies on tort law instead. Underinsured motorist coverage is offered but optional, and drivers can decline it in writing.
- Liability: 25/50/25, mandatory statewide, doesn't vary by flood history.
- Uninsured motorist: mandatory at the same 25/50/25 limits.
- Comprehensive: optional but the coverage that actually responds to Waccamaw River flood damage.
- PIP: not required or generally offered — South Carolina is a tort state.
A Campus Town Feeds the Local Driving Pool
Coastal Carolina University sits just outside downtown Conway and enrolls roughly 10,000 students, a meaningful share of them insuring a car for the first time. That adds a younger-driver skew to the local market that a purely residential county seat wouldn't have on its own.
Between the flood history and the student population, Conway's rates reflect two separate pressures rather than one dominant factor. Comparing more than one quote is worth the extra ten minutes here, since the number that fits a downtown address near the Riverwalk can look very different from one a few miles inland.