Wed. Oct 30th, 2024

Stacks of logs sit outside the home of Lucas Charbeneau in McCormick County on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Charbeneau estimates 30 to 40 trees came down on his property of less than three acres during Helene. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette).

MCCORMICK — For Joanna Huoni, Helene was the second storm she lived through in three months. Huoni was living in an RV in Texas, receiving cancer treatments, when she was hit by Hurricane Beryl.

“I lost everything, so I came home to mom’s,” she said.

Home was in the town of McCormick, where Huoni, 63, was living with her sister and her elderly mother when Helene hit.

The storm tore the power lines from their house, starting a small fire, Huoni said. Then the power went out and they were able to extinguish the fire. A tree went through the side of her mother’s above-ground pool, and a branch wrecked the radiator and grill on Huoni’s truck.

Her sister, who is diabetic, lost all of her insulin and went without for 10 days. It took five or six days for the pharmacy in Greenwood to re-open, then a few more days for insurance to process the request and replace the insulin.

“I have a defibrillator. My defibrillator actually zapped me 103 times in two weeks from the stress and from the heat and the exhaustion. It was not easy,” Huoni said.

Huoni spoke to the SC Daily Gazette recently while waiting for assistance with a Federal Emergency Management Agency application — the agency had a trailer, table and chairs set up outside the county office to help residents.

The McCormick County Emergency Services building on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Jason Brown, the agency head, said he did not go home for 10 days after Helene hit the county. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)

Huoni said she got her truck back from the repair shop that morning, Oct. 18 — four weeks after Helene hit and three days after the power lines had been reconnected to her mother’s house.

The damage to the house was about $40,000 and her mother’s homeowner’s insurance had a $10,000 deductible, so she was looking to see what aid the family was eligible for.

“My cancer journey has taught me to let go of yesterday,” she said. “Stop making yourself crazy about tomorrow. It’s not promised to any of us. You get through today the very best you can.”

“I’ve never been more proud of our community”

McCormick County is one of the smallest counties in the state by population, with about 9,500 people. It was also right in the path of the storm that ran along the Georgia-South Carolina border.

Its county offices were among the last to re-open after the storm — the administrative offices did not have generators, although the emergency management services did.

Official windspeed numbers are hard to know because the lack of power impacted the measuring stations, said John Quagliariello, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But a social media post from the Columbia NWS showed wind gusts of up to 100 mph buffeting parts of the county.

After the storm, the entire county was without power and basically every road in the county was impassable, said Jason Brown, who heads the county emergency services. It took 3½ weeks for power to be fully restored countywide, he said.

“The power crews — they did an excellent job getting power back up, don’t know how in the world they done it,” said Brown.

Brown said he made sure all county employees checked their equipment about 48 hours before the storm hit, but no one realized how bad it would be. Some law enforcement officers out responding to calls were blocked in by falling trees and rode out the storm in their vehicles.

When the weather cleared, the priority for first responders was to clear a route to the closest hospital, just over 20 miles away in Greenwood.

“Took them about seven or eight hours to cut and push that much. I mean, it was a lot of damage,” Brown said.

The county had 40 calls for emergency services in the first 12 hours after the storm, 13 for fire services and the rest medical, Brown said.

Medevac helicopters couldn’t fly in due to the wind. County first responders told people to make their own way to the hospital if they could, or used responders from nearby counties, or cut their way in.

“You get creative. You have to leave the truck sitting on the side of the road, you get out and walk,” Brown said, noting he walked about 2 miles to bring one man out. “We were blessed. Nobody died — could have been a lot worse.”

The 49 people in SC killed by the deadliest storm in state history

Brown estimated 60 to 70 homes in the county had some kind of damage, with a handful being seriously damaged.

That was one reason it took a while for the county administrative offices to re-open. Even if the office had power, many county employees would have a hard time making it in, he said.

“We had a few county employees that lost their homes. We weren’t worried about them trying to make it into work,” he said.

The storm came through in the early hours of Friday, Sept. 27.

On Sunday evening, Brown said, they noticed one of the three radio towers that powers the county-wide dispatch system was down. The generator failed, so they had to bring out a small mobile generator and send someone to refill it with fuel every eight hours.

Generators were a major issue for the county, said Charles Jennings, chairman of the county council. In 14 years as chair and 36 years on the council, he said he had never seen anything like Helene.

Part of a broken power pole still lies by the road in McCormick County on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, weeks after Helene hit the state. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)

After it came through, county officials called around to hardware stores for generators, trying to get necessary services up and running. A generator on the water plant also failed and they had to swap it, but Jennings said no one reported an interruption in the water.

“We even had an extra generator by the time the power started coming back on,” he said.

The town of McCormick did have backup generators, installed about seven years ago, Mayor Roy Smith said. That enabled the town hall and fire department to remain open, letting people charge devices from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“We could cook a little bit at the fire department, and everybody was volunteering and pitching in,” Smith said. “I’ve never been more proud of our community than I was at that time.”

The town got power back about five days in, Smith said. He remembers handing out ice when he got word that power would be back soon.

“Right behind me was Burger King, and I looked up and I saw the lamp pole on Burger King lit up, and that was a blessing,” he said.

McCormick County has at least four power providers, and the county is at the end of the transmission line for all four of them, according to state Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, who represents a large portion of the county.

Because of that, power companies had to work their way along the transmission lines into the county, Massey said, fixing all the damage behind them to get there.

“It wasn’t that anybody forgot about them. Nobody forgot about them — just they had to do all this infrastructure restoration work before they got to the houses in McCormick,” he said. “They have essentially been having to rebuild the grid, and I don’t know that you can fully appreciate that unless you see it firsthand.”

“There’s just so much to pick up”

Outside the town of McCormick, power restoration took longer.

Valerie Houston lives in Plum Branch, about 5 miles outside McCormick, and she said it took about 10 days to get power back. She stayed in Greenwood for most of that time with an acquaintance.

“It was rough,” she said of the storm. “The loud noise sounded like a train was coming.”

Houston, 58, said there was damage to the siding and shingles on her mobile home, and a branch dented her car. A 60-year-old pine tree was uprooted and fell beside her house. Neighbors took the branches off, but she doesn’t have the money to pay someone to cut up the trunk, she said.

Houston was also waiting on assistance with FEMA outside the emergency department when she spoke to the Gazette. She filled out the application online, but it listed her as living in Saluda County, so she wanted to sort out the issue.

Stacks of logs sit outside the home of Lucas Charbeneau in McCormick County on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Charbeneau estimates 30-40 trees came down on his property of less than three acres during Helene. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette).

Lucas Charbeneau took a break from cleaning his yard to speak with the Gazette outside his home, roughly between Parkersville and Modoc. He had two neat piles of logs already outside his house, and more on the other side, he said, waiting for the state Department of Transportation to pick it up.

“It may sit here for a month before they get here, there’s just so much to pick up,” he said.

Charbeneau, 66, estimated 30 or 40 trees came down on his property, which is just under three acres, although none of them hit his home or buildings. His neighbor had about 100 trees down, he said.

He expects to get a little money from FEMA for lost food, but nothing from FEMA or insurance for the $4,500 he spent on a tree service to get the wood cut and stacked.

Despite the weeks-long lack of power, no one the Gazette spoke to complained about the response from power companies or government agencies. A few gas stations were up and running quickly, rationing gas to make sure everyone got some. Churches and restaurants and neighbors made sure everyone was fed.

The state Emergency Management agency showed up with food and water in less than three days, which county officials called on schedule, since they expect to be self-sufficient for 72 hours.

Local officials are already looking to how to better prepare for next time.

Making sure shelters in the county have backup generators is one priority, said Brown, the head of county emergency management.

Although police cars won’t blow over like a firetruck might, Brown said the sheriff’s department will not go out when winds top 40 mph anymore to avoid getting vehicles trapped by falling trees.

The county, along with many of the residents, should be reimbursed for the cost of the disaster by FEMA. But the scale of the damage is hard to calculate at this point.

Brown said he didn’t want to even guess at a price tag, even weeks after the storm.

“I know this storm is going to cost McCormick County more than any other natural disaster we’ve seen in our history,” he said. “Recovery is going to take a while.”

By