In Part 2 of our look at South Carolina one year after Hurricane Helene, a pair of first responders in Aiken share their thoughts about the scariest night at work they’ve ever felt. And how they’ve not completely moved on.
Lt. Joe O’Conor spoke for his colleagues about Sept. 27, 2024.
“All of us who were working that night have agreed that that is the most scared we've ever been in this job,” he said.
O’Conor and his colleagues respond to stabbings. Shootings. Domestic violence. Often in the dark.
But even in the dark, it isn’t dark dark. There’s moonlight and streetlamps and ambient glow from houses and buildings downtown.
But not on Sept. 27. Hurricane Helene shut off all the lights in the City of Aiken. And in this limitless dark, with only headlights and flashlights and strobe lights to guide them, Aiken’s emergency responders listened to the trees toppling all around them, knowing it might be the last sound they would ever hear, every time they heard it.
“I was out trying to clear roads on the bypass to keep paths to the hospital open,” O’Conor said. “And as we're pulling one tree with the winch, another tree's falling down, 20 feet behind us. So, yeah, there were several times that I was like, what am I doing here? But it's what we had to do.”
And at least he was getting to do it. While O’Conor listened to the storm from inside of it, Dan Boothe, a city firefighter, Aiken’s community risk reduction coordinator, and its opioid awareness and education coordinator, was in the dark inside, listening to responders going through the storm of the century.
“I was dying, “Boothe said. “My mental state was dying because I'm on the radio listening. I'm in a pitch-black station … listening to their shift out there doing everything. There were times where you could hear the panic in the patrol officer's voice as they're on the radio. Not being able to be out there and assist, it was scary. Because all I could do was listen.”
Ego? Sure, said Dana Rideout, a city therapist whose office around the corner from Aiken Public Safety is a common spot for city first responders to visit.
But there’s more than that. There’s the aftermath; the quiet.
“When we're quiet,” Rideout said, “that ends up being the issue because the nervous system isn't really geared for that, it doesn't feed off of that.”
Public servants, those whose jobs are centered on a larger mission, she said, do fine when action is happening. There’s a purpose there; a way to disconnect and get the job at hand done.
The quiet aftermath is when the should’ve/could’ve stuff seeps in. And it’s here that guys like O’Conor and Boothe still struggle with Helene.
At least 12 people in Aiken County died as a result of Helene. A few were city residents, some of whom died after the storm from health issues that Helene brought to the fore.
This kind of thing plays into first responders’ lingering stress too, but under it all is the fear of real helplessness. Not just from stumbling around in the dark or listening to panic in friends’ voices, but also from being powerless to stop the damage – which, in the city and the county, was immense.
That includes being unable to protect your own.
“I'm on duty, waiting to see if I needed to go out, do anything,” Boothe said. “And also kind of keeping tabs on the station to make sure we didn't have anything that damaged the station, while also wondering, has Carolina Bay collapsed? Is my house underneath trees? What's going on back home?”
O’Conor and Boothe managed to escape Helene with little trouble at their own homes. Rideout was in Montana when the storm hit and felt the urge to fly back to Aiken to make sure all was good, too. Her home also survived Helene.
None of them knew that at the time of the storm, of course. In their heads: visions of families and friends and neighbors in need; colleagues in jeopardy. Rideout is not even a little surprised that she still sees city responders a year later.
Even if it’s not Helene that brings them in, she said, it kind of is.
“If something happens to them and it does bring them to my office,” she said, “there is energy of Helene. Some of the what-ifs, I could have done that better. I should have done that better. That contributes to why they're coming in my office.”
In Part 3 of this series, a revisit to the small City of Landrum in Spartanburg County, whence the first reports of Helene-related deaths emerged.
