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How a disaster from last spring still resonates in this Rock Hill neighborhood

The grand windows of New Mt. Olivet AME Zion Church used to greet drivers heading into Rock Hill's historic Southside neighborhood. Since the April hailstorm, boards protect against the elements in place of the large glass panes. The church is among several properties in this end of town that are still waiting to repair damage from the hailstorm and, later, from Tropical Storm Helene.
Scott Morgan
/
South Carolina Public Radio
The grand windows of New Mt. Olivet AME Zion Church used to greet drivers heading into Rock Hill's historic Southside neighborhood. Since the April hailstorm, boards protect against the elements in place of the large glass panes. The church is among several properties in this end of town that are still waiting to repair damage from the hailstorm and, later, from Tropical Storm Helene.

April 20, 2024, was a warm, mostly sunny Saturday in Rock Hill, until it wasn’t. A little after 4 p.m., a microburst of hailstones fell across a narrow slice of York County in general, and a small neighborhood in Rock Hill in particular.

On a damp, gusty December morning, much of the Southside neighborhood that took the brunt of devastating hail looks as if nothing had ever happened.

But a lot of this end of town looks as though something certainly did. While there are numerous new roofs and a lot of updated siding, installed courtesy of insurance following severe damage to homes and businesses, there are still several properties with damaged roofs, chipped siding, and boarded windows.

One of the most persistent issues keeping Southside from getting out from under the April storm is a lack of financial resilience. Southside is among the poorest districts in Rock Hill, even as the city is trying to build this neighborhood back up. That’s happening, but it’s slow going, and not everyone is able to put the storm behind them yet, even after eight months.

“It looked like somebody set off machine gun fire. That's how bad that hit,” said Samuel Lee Robinson III, a homeowner on Lucky Lane. “It didn't really last as long as you thought, but the damage it did in that short amount of time, over here on this side of Rock Hill – people are still trying to build and fix.”

Robinson’s siding took a beating and extra-large hailstones hurt his roof. He’s been able to take care of those things, mostly. But he’s still dealing with water damage inside his house, wrought by Tropical Storm Helene in September – damage made possible by the April storm, because Robinson couldn’t get everything fixed before Helene’s heavy rainfall.

He does count himself as lucky because he’s been able to address storm damage, but he knows his neighbors – many of whom were renters who had to leave damaged properties after the storm and haven’t returned since – didn’t all fare so well.

“You can walk around here and still see people still trying to rebuild from this, still waiting for help to come,” he said.

He points across the street, where the siding on his neighbor’s house is chipped and flaked in what almost looks like a woodland camouflage pattern of lighter paint on top and a darker color beneath. Other homes in the blocks around Luck Lane show lesser, but still distinct evidence of storm damage.

It wasn’t just homes, of course.

Crystal Nazeer, owner, with her husband, Jonathan, of a small produce shop on Crawford Road called FARMacy, has just returned to the store for a grand re-opening it took seven months to get to.

“It was pretty bad,” she said. “Our roof was like Swiss cheese.”

FARMacy’s roof is flat, so when a spring and summer of soaking rains came, what didn’t leak collected water. What did leak created issues with mold that required major repairs. The store raised $15,000 from the community to get the roof and leak issues fixed.

“It gave us a feeling like the community does want us here. They do want to support us,” she said. “Even though we may not see them come in the doors all the time, they do want to see us still open.”

During the store’s down time, Nazeer said, the business was still able to be the community hub it’s been since it opened two years ago. The Nazeers trade in community development and healthy eating programs and oversee a community garden out back, next to the Emmett Scott Center.

That farming program – particularly the greenhouse – took a pummeling in April too, but Nazeer said the store could still host programs and be part of the community.

“Everything that was going on before we had the store kind of kept going,” she said. “We just didn't have the store.”

Insurances went a long way for Robinson and the Nazeers. Not so, however, for Fletcher Ervin, a 73-year-old retired carpenter whose house behind Clinton College was badly damaged in April, further damaged in September, and remains in a kind of limbo.

“I pay an amount of $1,200 a year for insurance,” Ervin said, pointing to a strip of vinyl sign he has taped and tucked over a pane of glass in his living room bay window. The sign covers a hole the size of a cantaloupe, which does little to stanch the flow of cold, damp air or to repel the interest of flying bugs into his house.

“My deductible is $2,500,” he said. And despite what he thinks is about $5,000 in damages stemming from the hailstorm, including the roof and siding, his insurance company cut him a check he says he can do almost nothing with.

“At the end of the day,” Ervin said, “I come up with an $86 check.”

Since filing his claim, Ervin said his annual homeowner’s insurance has gone up to $1,700.

While there might not be a connection between Ervin’s filed claim and the higher premium – the South Carolina Department of Insurance says weather-related insurance claims are increasing and as a result, insurance premiums are rising universally, so Ervin’s higher rate could be something that would have happened anyway –he hasn’t bothered to file any claims related to Helene, because he doesn’t want his premium to rise again, just in case.

He would be willing to deal with the repairs himself. But with his eyesight failing and his working income gone, he said he can’t get to the repairs efficiently.

“It's been a little struggle,” he said. “And while my windows are still busted up, I'm really having trouble keeping warm and fighting the bugs. So it's like a fight, a journey, where I feel like I'm losing some time.”

Scott Morgan is the Upstate multimedia reporter for South Carolina Public Radio, based in Rock Hill. He cut his teeth as a newspaper reporter and editor in New Jersey before finding a home in public radio in Texas. Scott joined South Carolina Public Radio in March of 2019. His work has appeared in numerous national and regional publications as well as on NPR and MSNBC. He's won numerous state, regional, and national awards for his work including a national Edward R. Murrow.