H&E Equipment Services has announced the opening of a new branch in the US, adding to its footprint in South Carolina.

Located in the Myrtle Beach area, the branch offers a range of equipment and specialises in the rental of aerial lifts, earthmoving equipment, telescopic forklifts, compaction equipment and generators. 

The site, which includes a fully fenced yard area, offices and a repair shop, will offer equipment from a number of OEMs, including Bomag, Genie, Hamm, Sany and Kubota. 

Joe Pannunzio, branch manager, H&E, said, “H&E has extended its coverage along the South Carolina coast, from Georgetown up to the North Carolina state line, and then inland to I-95 from Dillon to Manning. We can easily reach all points in between with close proximity to state highways 501, 701, and 368 and to major roadways that branch off in all directions. 

“Our location strategically bridges the gap between our existing Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, branches, so we are able to help both new and existing customers secure the right equipment for their projects.”

The opening also marks the continuation of its goal to open between 12 and 15 new sites in 2024. To date, the company has opened five new branches and completed two acquisitions in 2024. Since the second quarter of 2023 the company has opened 19 new branches across the US and acquired nine companies. 

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A week from Tuesday, around 30 runoff elections will take place across South Carolina.

These are for races in which no candidate received a majority of votes during last week’s primaries, ranging from local races like sheriffs and county council to seats representing South Carolinians on Capitol Hill and at the State House.

“You’re picking the candidates that are either going to run against someone from the other party or if they’re unopposed, that’s a mainline right to that office in November,” Sara Ballard, executive director of the nonpartisan organization South Carolina Women in Leadership, said.

That is especially the case throughout much of South Carolina, where the vast majority of legislative districts lean heavily toward one party or the other, making them uncompetitive in a general election.

But the South Carolina Election Commission said runoffs are usually low-turnout races, with most garnering single-digit turnout among eligible voters.

“With such low turnout, your vote really goes further, so it really matters,” John Michael Catalano with the South Carolina Election Commission said.

The first thing to know is who’s eligible to vote in runoffs.

For starters, you must be a registered voter in the district or county where the runoff is.

If you voted in last week’s primary for that race, you are only eligible to vote in the runoff for that same party.

For example, if you voted in a Democratic primary, and there is now a Republican runoff for that race, you are not eligible to vote in that runoff.

“But if you didn’t vote in the primaries at all, you still can vote in the runoffs, and you can pick either party,” Catalano said. “You don’t have to vote in the primary to vote in the runoffs.”

As with last week’s primaries, South Carolinians have three ways to vote in runoffs, but they are on a condensed timeline.

People who meet certain qualifications can vote absentee by mail, like if they are 65 or older.

If you voted this way for the primary and checked a box on your absentee ballot request form that asked for you to be sent a runoff ballot if one of those races advanced to a runoff, the South Carolina Election Commission will send that to you.

But if you did not do that and want to request a mail-in ballot, that deadline has already passed.

The Election Commission is asking absentee voters to return their mail-in ballots in person, if they can.

“Because that’s just faster and you can cut out the mail that way. But if you’re not able to do that — you’re living too far away or whatever reason — just be sure to drop that in the mail as soon as possible,” Catalano said.

But there are still other ways to vote, including three days of in-person early voting.

That starts this Wednesday and will run through Friday, at locations in every county where there is a runoff, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Locations can be found here.)

“It’s a tight schedule, so we’re really urging voters not to delay, vote as soon as you’re able to,” Catalano said.

Eligible voters can also head to the polls on runoff day, which is next week Tuesday, June 25.

Polls will be open that day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the counties where there is at least one runoff.

South Carolinians voting in person, or if they are voting absentee by mail and returning their ballot in person, will need to bring a photo ID with them.

The following is a list of all runoffs that will be held on June 25, sorted by county:

Abbeville

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican

Allendale

• County Council, District 1 – Democratic

Anderson

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• State House of Representative, District 9 – Republican

Calhoun

• State House of Representatives, District 93 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 26 – Republican

Charleston

Colleton

• Clerk of Court – Democratic

Dillon

• County Council, District 1 – Democratic
• County Council, District 3 – Democratic

Edgefield

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican

Georgetown

• County Council, District 3 – Democratic

Greenville

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• State Senate, District 6 – Republican
• State Senate, District 12 – Republican
• State House of Representatives, District 28 – Republican
• County Council, District 20 – Republican
• County Council, District 22 – Republican
• County Council, District 25 – Democratic

Greenwood

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• State Senate, District 10 – Republican

Kershaw

• State Senate, District 35 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 35 – Republican

Laurens

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• County Council, District 7 – Republican

Lee

• State Senate, District 35 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 35 – Republican

Lexington

• State Senate, District 10 – Republican
• State Senate, District 23 – Republican
• State Senate, District 26 – Republican
• State House of Representatives, District 93 – Democratic

McCormick

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican

Newberry

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican

Oconee

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican

Orangeburg

• State House of Representatives, District 93 – Democratic
• Coroner – Democratic

Pickens

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• Sheriff – Republican
• County Council, District 5 – Republican

Richland

• State Senate, District 22 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 26 – Republican
• State Senate, District 35 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 35 – Republican

Saluda

• US House of Representatives, District 3 – Republican
• State Senate, District 10 – Republican
• Probate Judge – Republican
• Spartanburg
• State Senate, District 12 – Republican
• State House of Representatives, District 34 – Republican
• County Council, District 4 – Republican

Sumter

• State Senate, District 35 – Democratic
• State Senate, District 35 – Republican

York

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NEW DELHI – If you ask Ansar Khan, he will tell you that the heat killed his baby daughter Ina. She didn’t wake up from her afternoon nap in late May, on the dusty scrap of land she knew as home, with only a blue plastic sheet to shade her.

It was the hottest day he’d ever experienced, and a hot wind blew. It was 121 degrees in New Delhi that day.

“She was crying a bit, so we gave her milk and we all napped. When we woke up, we tried waking her up,” Khan tells NPR. “It was all over in half an hour.”

Heatwaves have been roiling swaths of South Asia since April, including southern Pakistan, where temperatures went over 125 degrees. In New Delhi, one of the world’s largest cities, with a population of over 30 million people, that 121-degree day was the peak.

Inequality in the face of heat

But the heatwave did not impact residents equally. Consider laborers like Ishtiyaq, 24, in the working-class Mina Bazaar in New Delhi. A megaphone rigged to his stall blares: “Drink it cold! Drink it sweet!” It’s an advertisement for lassi, a cooling yogurt drink. Men and women downed cups for about 10 cents apiece on a recent day, when the temperature was 100 degrees.

Ishtiyaq looks busy — but he says he’s in a slump. He expects he’ll only make $7 profit for the day’s work. “People stay home when it’s hot,” he shrugs. Ishtiyaq, who only has one name, says he doesn’t have that choice. He supports his wife, his kids, his parents. If he doesn’t work, there’s no money.

“What can I say brother? The poor must endure it all.”

-“This is what Indian vulnerability looks like,” says Aditya Valiathan Pillai, who studies policy responses to extreme heat at the New Delhi-based thinktank Sustainable Futures Collaborative. “You have 75% of India’s working population, well over 350 million people who are directly heat exposed because of their jobs,” he says, citing World Bank data.

Pillai says it’s not just outdoor workers. It includes people who live in slums — where it’s often hotter than other parts of the city, because those areas typically lack shade-giving trees, and homes are built with materials that can make spaces hotter, like aluminum roofs or even thick plastic. Like the Sanjay Camp, where tiny, jumbly homes huddle near New Delhi’s leafy diplomatic quarter.

A desperate search for water

There’s also no running water in Sanjay Camp. Men, women and kids crowd around a water pump, buckets and plastic tankers at the ready. Resident Ram Babu keeps order. One women in the crowd says she’s come from a nearby slum. “We don’t get much water near where we live, so I come here,” she says. She asks not to use her name because she’s not meant to be taking water allocated to Sanjay Camp. “I’m trying my luck,” she laughs.

Residents say government water tankers also come three times a day to shore up supplies. On New Delhi’s hottest days, one journalist filmed residents chasing one of those government tankers. Men clambered atop the moving vehicle. Women banged on the sides and threw up hoses hoping to drain off water for their buckets and water tankers.

And yet, a 40-minute drive away, to a homeless shelter for women and children, having a reliable water pump or a government water tanker is a dream. “We fight over water here,” says one resident. “There’s no water to drink. To wash. To cool down. Nothing.”

But they’re luckier than other unhoused families. At least, they have somewhere relatively safe to sleep. A few dozen mothers and children get to sleep here, in a large room. One little girl points to the beds crammed inside. “Three kids sleep in that bed,” she says. “And in that one, and in that one.” Two fans sluggishly push around the air. “It’s boiling here,” she whispers.

Children facing the spectre of death

Taranum, who only has one name and guesses her age at 34, sleeps here with her three daughters. She was recently diagnosed with typhoid, an illnessmore prevalent duringheatwaves when water contaminates more easily. She said at the peak of her illness, she felt like she would die. She’s terrified at the thought.

“I can’t die,” she says. “We are homeless. Who will take care of my daughters?” She shakes her head: “But I can’t complain. Other people have it harder. Two babies died in this heat.”

One of the babies was two days old.

Her mother’s name is Salma, and she lives under a tree near the shelter — there’s no space for her inside. On a shaky phone line arranged by a friend, she tells NPR that she pushed together a lean-to near her tree where she gave birth. She says her baby was healthy and began breastfeeding right away. But two days later, the infant died. She didn’t have a name.

Salma says the only shade she could give her baby — and her other children — was a plastic blue sheet that she pitched over them.

Ina Khan died too, at around the same time. She too, lived near the shelter, shaded by a wall. Ansar Khan is sure the heat caused her death, but there’s no way of proving that now.

But experts and studies say babies are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. Their small bodies can easily heat up. They can’t regulate their temperatures well –- they don’t sweat much, for starters. They easily dehydrate. And so they’re more likely to die.

“You can imagine how heat may have played a role in these cases,” says Harleen Marwah, pediatric resident physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an advocate of raising awareness of the dangers of extreme heat in children. “We know that the burden of extreme heat is not shared equally. And already, vulnerable populations tend to shoulder that burden even more.”

Pillai, who studies policy responses to extreme heat, says government institutions haven’t yet figured out a way to collect robust data around heat. “And that’s very simply because [of] this massive black hole we have in terms of understanding heat wave deaths and heat illnesses. I can’t even tell you whether hundreds of people have died or thousands of people have died. I can’t even put an order of magnitude to it.”

That’s because India isn’t ready for climate change-induced heatwaves that are pummeling this region, Pillai says. The infrastructure isn’t in place, including data gathering, even as these heatwaves are likely to occur more often, last longer and be more extreme.

“What we’re seeing today is nowhere close to how bad it’s going to get in the next ten, 15 years,” says Pillai. In fact, some areas of India may become the first places on earth to be exposed to heatwaves so extreme that humans will not be able to survive them without air conditioning or other types of cooling, according to a 2020 study by the consulting group McKinsey.

So far, local and foreign media report that dozens of people have died in India because of the heat but that is likely a vast undercount. The dead included 33 poll workers in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where citizens were casting their vote in the last stage of India’s six-week elections that ended on June 4.

The toll does not include Ina Khan, 6 months old.

Khan says when he took her to the hospital, no one asked him why she might have died. He says hospital officials simply confirmed Ina was dead, then handed her back for burial.

Her only known cause of death was scrawled on the receipt of her $7 burial at the local Muslim cemetery. It said, “fever.”

Copyright 2024 NPR