State Rep. John McCravy, R-Greenwood, was explaining how Greenwood County is slowly, inch by inch, putting itself back together following Tropical Storm Helene.
Greenwood was in the path of Helene’s eye when it hit South Carolina last Thursday, and the damage has been extraordinary. Trees and power lines are down everywhere in the county. Some traffic lights and gas stations are back to power. They and the fast food restaurants saw lines stretching into the right lanes of several roads, as residents made their way to something to eat or to fill up their cars.
With power still out to almost all residential customers Monday afternoon, getting to something open was the most popular game in town.
I had asked McCravy on Sunday how Greenwood County was faring. He responded with the word “catastrophic.”
But he also said that neighbors were pulling together, which you could see if you were driving around the county Monday. A food and water distribution site had been set up at the county courthouse; neighbors helped neighbors clear pieces of trees from yards; utility linemen, dozens deep, cut fallen trees away from downed power lines everywhere.
This is what we were discussing at McCravy’s dining room table when his wife, Dana, came home. She’d managed to find some water and snacks at a minimart. She didn’t want to brave the lines at Walmart, which just got itself back online Monday.
And, almost in passing, she mentioned driving past the house of her cousin, Eddie Coleman. A 200-year-old oak tree that had stood in Coleman’s front yard smashed through the roof of his house around 5 a.m. Friday.
Coleman wasn’t in his bed. If he was, he almost certainly would have been the second person killed by a Helene-felled tree in Greenwood County. Instead, he was in his living room, where the bedroom floor crashed in and hit Coleman in the head, knocking him down.
We, the McCravys and I, learned this at the same time, over the phone, after McCravy reached out to see if Coleman was all right.
It turns out he’s fine – and, despite local rumors, not fresh from any hospitals.
Coleman showed me the damage about a half-hour later, which you can see for yourself in the video below.
You can also hear the account from Coleman himself in the audio story at the top of this page.
Coleman said he wanted to tell his story so that everyone would know that amid the constant flow of bad news from a devastated state, someone survived.
And he has the scar on top of his head to prove it.
