GEORGETOWN, S.C. — Along South Carolina’s coast, residents were preparing for a second round of flooding as rivers swollen from days of devastating rains make their way toward the Atlantic.

And in the Columbia area, where some have started to return home to assess damage and clean up, the threat of more flooding still hadn’t lifted. About 1,000 residents near the compromised Beaver Dam were told to evacuate Wednesday morning. Crews were filling a sinkhole with rocks in hopes that would stabilize the dam.

In coastal Georgetown, one of America’s oldest cities, Scott Youngblood was putting more sandbags Tuesday by the door of the Augustus & Carolina furniture store on Front Street, the popular tourist attraction that runs along the Sampit River.

Each day since last weekend’s storm — which sent more than a foot of water washing down the street — water at high tide has lapped against those sandbags. Residents are concerned there may be more flooding on the Black and Waccamaw rivers — two waterways cited as worrisome by Gov. Nikki Haley. Both drain into Georgetown County.

The Waccamaw was expected to crest at 5 feet above flood stage in Conway, in Horry County, on Thursday. The Black crested Tuesday upstream at Kingstree at about 10 feet above flood stage, breaking a record, town officials said.

Youngblood hopes things won’t be as bad this time as earlier in the week.

“We’re hanging our hat on that we’re not going to have that combination of tide and rain and such,” he said. “We had so much rain, but the primary thing we were experiencing was the water table coming up through the bottom bubbling up from beneath the flooring. We had quite a bit of damage.”

Tom and Christine Doran, retired teachers who recently moved to a riverfront apartment in Georgetown, were moving their belongings out Tuesday after battling tides and rain for four days.

“The first flooding was Saturday afternoon and we kept ahead of that with a wet vac and we thought, ‘We’ve got this,’” Tom Doran said. “Then it just started coming in from all sides. It was just too high. Every afternoon with the high tide it floods up to 5 inches.”

After taking an aerial tour of damaged areas on Tuesday, Haley said that while the sunshine was a good sign, the state still needs to be cautious.

“We are going to be extremely careful. We are watching this minute by minute,” she said. She said evacuations may be needed toward the coast because of rivers swollen from the storm, which has killed 15 in South Carolina and claimed two lives in North Carolina.

Rescue crews were searching Wednesday morning for two people who went missing in Lower Richland County when their pickup entered flood water. Sheriff’s deputies told local news outlets they were called out around 3 a.m. Wednesday to a road that had been closed for several days after being washed out.