Winds from Tropical Storm Helene ripped the roof off this home in Williston, S.C., at 5 a.m. Sept. 27, 2024, and caused the sunroom and screened-in porch to collapse. (Provided by Emily Wiles)
COLUMBIA, South Carolina. — Tropical Storm Helene caused at least 19 deaths in South Carolina as its winds covered the state early Friday and left more than 1.2 million homes and businesses without power statewide.
The Anderson County Coroner’s office confirmed two people were killed in that Upstate county when trees fell on their homes, according to spokeswoman Alyssa Whitfield.
And Aiken County Coroner Darryl Ables said his office is investigating four deaths related to the storm.
At a briefing Friday afternoon, Gov. Henry McMaster confirmed two firefighters died in Saluda County and two people died in Newberry County in traffic-related incidents caused by the storm. Multiple news outlets report the death toll in Spartanburg County rose to five, and four died in Greenville County.
Winds from Tropical Storm Helene downed trees across South Carolina. Pictured is a home in Williston, S.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Provided by Kevin Carroll)
Meanwhile, utilities statewide reported outages, according to online maps from Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Santee Cooper and the state’s electric cooperatives. Executives from the power companies said some outages could last through the weekend and into next week.
Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said the number of outages in his company’s territory is nearly the same as what that area experienced after Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
The Upstate took the brunt of the storm. High winds uprooted trees from the ground already saturated after days of rain, McMaster said.
John Quagliariello, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, reported rainfall totals as high as 15 inches in Oconee, Greenville and Pickens in the days ahead of the storm. At the height of the storm, wind gusts in the state ranged from 50 to 70 miles per hour, including 72-mile-per-hour gusts recorded in Aiken and Anderson and an 82-mile-per-hour gust just over the border in Augusta.
The National Weather Service issued numerous tornado warnings but Quagliariello said it’s still unknown how many tornados may have actually occurred.
Duke Energy alone was reporting 545,000 outages in the Upstate as of noon Friday.
Jimmy Stanton, head of state-owned utility Santee Cooper, said crews at the company’s power station in Anderson County had to cut through trees to get into work Friday morning. But most of the power company’s issues were with its major transmission lines that supply electricity to South Carolina’s electric cooperatives.
Central Electric Power Cooperative CEO Rob Hochstetler, speaking on behalf of the state’s 19 cooperatives, said the storm snapped several hundred poles and yanked down lines. Cooperative employees who have been in the business upwards of 40 years in the Upstate and along South Carolina’s western border reported Helene was the most destructive storm they’ve ever seen.
Trees even fell on the trucks of two crews while they were out trying to restore power, Hochstetler said. No workers were injured.
All asked for patience as crews work to get the lights back on.
“Tomorrow, it’s going to be 86 degrees and clear, and you’re going to say, ‘Why can’t I watch the football game? Why can’t I go out and get my life get back to normal?’” Kissam said. “Life’s not going to be back to normal until probably the middle of next week from a power standpoint, just because of the sheer damage that we have.”
Utility executives stressed the importance of staying away from downed power lines and state Fire Marshall Jonathan Jones reminded residents to use caution should they choose to run a generator. He said generators should not be run inside homes or attached garages and should be kept away from doors, windows and other openings to prevent the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning.
For those displaced by the storm, the state has six shelters open across Laurens, Orangeburg, Oconee, Pickens, Saluda and Spartanburg counties. So far, only about 30 people have sought shelter, according to S.C. Department of Social Services Director Mike Leach.
During the weekend, Quagliariello said the National Weather Service is forecasting major river flooding on the Saluda River near Greenville, the Broad Rivers near the North Carolina border and the Wateree River near the dam.
S.C. Department of Environmental Services Interim Director Myra Reece said her agency is in contact with officials in North Carolina monitoring the Lake Lure dam that, if it were to breach, could impact South Carolina.
Helene made landfall in Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph. As the storm pushed inland, it weakened but was still a Category 1 storm as it moved up through Georgia, tracking slightly more to the East than anticipated, and brought tropical-storm-force winds and heavy rainfall across South Carolina.
“Tropical Storm Helene is having a devastating impact on South Carolina,” GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. “The scope of damage from the storm has been wide and deep. People are not only without power, but there is heavy flooding, homes have been destroyed and lives have been lost and upended.”
Graham said the congressional delegation will work with the governor to secure federal disaster relief.
Helene’s destructive path comes less than two months after Tropical Storm Debby soaked parts of the state as it meandered up South Carolina’s coast and into North Carolina, spinning off tornadoes, causing flooding and damaging hundreds of homes. But no deaths or injuries were reported in South Carolina from that slow-moving storm.
This story was originally produced by the SC Daily Gazette which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, including the Daily Montanan, supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.