State officials said four people have died and more than 1.25 million South Carolinians are without power following Tropical Storm Helene’s destructive power that hammered the state over the past 24 hours.
Gov. Henry McMaster and power company representatives made comparisons to Hurricane Hugo when it came to power grid damage, which will take days to weeks to fully restore. Electric grids in several counties and electric cooperative nearly went completely offline at times.
“With the trees being uprooted and fallen we have probably more power outages—maybe ever, we don’t know,” McMaster said as damage assessments remain ongoing. “This is one that’s going to take some patience because we have so much power that is out.”
Tropical Storm Helene has been blamed for at least 19 deaths in South Carolina. Two were firefighters in Saluda County and the two others were in Newberry County, McMaster said. At least 42 people have died nationwide from the storm, according to NBC News.
Thousands of linemen from across the country and even as far as Canada are assisting in the restoration efforts in the state, as well as hard hit Georgia and Florida where Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday night. Though the destructive, tropical storm force winds have died down, the cleanup phase also poses life-safety risks. Trees fell on two linemen’s vehicles Friday while they worked to restore power.
Duke Energy Carolinas, which provides power to the bulk of counties west of Columbia, saw nearly 80% of its customers lose power, around 633,000. Michael Callahan, Duke Energy state president, said the full extent of the damage isn’t yet known.
"This storm has caused significant and perhaps historic damage to the Duke Energy system,” Callahan said. “In counties like Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson we had nearly 100 percent of our customers that experienced an outage.”
Callahan said some 11,000 workers from 18 different states will be working to restore power.
The issue isn’t just hundreds of utility poles snapping, but also damage to major, high-voltage transmission lines, distribution lines and substations.
Other utility representatives repeated the same issues.
Dominion Energy saw nearly half of its 800,000 customers lose power in the state, on par with what happened when Hurricane Hugo hit the state in 1989, making its way all the way to Charlotte as a Category 1 hurricane. Keller Kissam, president and CEO of Dominion Energy South Carolina, said the issues are widespread including in Lexington, the third hardest hit county by outages.
“We've got four helicopters that are up in the air, two of them have the long saws on them,” Kissam said. “We'll focus on distribution, but we work transmission first. We have to get it energized. Then we can bring power to the substations in your neighborhood and then get your distribution going from there.”
John Quagiliariello, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said rainfall totals exceeded 15 inches in some parts of Greenville, Oconee and Pickens counties. Several rivers in the Upstate and Midlands are seeing moderate to major flooding as a result. Those include the Saluda River above Old Easy Road in Greenville, the Broad River near the North Carolina border and at Carolina Eastman, the Wateree River at Lake Wateree Dam and Stevens Creek near Modoc.
But Helene brought winds to the Upstate that are typically seen from storms affecting the Lowcountry and Grand Strand.
“The intensity of Helene at landfall, combined with this extensive wind field, and very fast movement, allow tropical storm force winds to penetrate far inland spreading over most of the state,” Quagiliariello said. “There were likely many tornadoes east of I-20 since yesterday, and in fact, the National Weather Service issued 63 tornado warnings statewide.”
S.C. Department of Transportation Secretary Justin Powell said 2,300 employees are working to clear trees and record amounts of debris from first interstates, then critical corridors (such as roads that lead to hospitals), then primary routes and then neighborhood streets.
“This is an unprecedented amount of debris on the roadway, so we're going to be working at it,” Powell added that nine crews were prepositioned in the Upstate and seven more are heading that way to assist in cleanup.
The highest amounts of trees down, Greenwood, Laurens, Greenville, Spartanburg, Pickens counties.
Ed Simmer, South Carolina Department of Public Health interim director, said six hospitals and several nursing and assisted living homes are without power and operating on backup generators.
“We have no current issues, although we are in very close contact with the,” Simmer said. “And that's part of what we do when we license them, when we inspect them is that we check to make sure they have a good emergency plan, so they are very well prepared and they are functioning normally at this time.”
Damage assessments remain ongoing and local officials will provide debris cleanup information to residents.
