WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC/AP) - South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and his “Team South Carolina” urged people to be patient as crews work to restore power across the state after Hurricane Helene caused massive outages.
The South Carolina Department of Public Safety confirmed a total of 25 had died as a result of Helene in the Palmetto State as of late Friday afternoon. SCDPS spokesperson Heather Biance said six deaths occurred in Spartanburg County, Greenville reported five deaths and Aiken and Anderson Counties each reported four deaths. Saluda County reported three storm-related deaths, Newberry County reported two deaths and Chesterfield County reported one death, she said.
During Friday’s briefing, McMaster said the two Saluda County deaths were firefighters, but he did not provide additional details about the circumstances of those deaths.
“We believe there will be more, but they have not been confirmed, so we ask to keep all of those families and friends in your prayers,” McMaster said.
The Associated Press said Helene caused at least 44 deaths across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Power crews say it will take days to restore power
McMaster urged people to be patient as repairs and recovery get underway.
“It’s going to take time,” he stressed.
He also urged caution for people traveling on roads because many power lines have been downed.
“As the storm moves from South Carolina, residents must continue to be aware of the possible dangers,” Director of South Carolina Emergency Management Division, Kim Stenson said.
He listed some of those dangers as high waters, high winds, flooding and misinformation.
The leaders of several utility companies said crews are working to restore power, but it could take days for that to happen.
“You will be frustrated as this goes. Tomorrow, it’s gonna be 86 degrees and clear. And you’re gonna say why can’t I watch the football game? Why can’t I go out and my life get back to normal? And 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,” the president of Dominion Energy, Keller Kissam said.
Kissam said Helene was very different from most storms because most come from the Atlantic and push the energy east, as the upstate experienced severe damage.
“It was supposed to go through Atlanta but it came closer to Augusta. It threw all of its energy to the east, and that’s why we have the number of outages that we have, mainly from shear force winds taking down trees and causing structural damage,” he said.
They warned people to watch for downed power lines and to go nowhere near them.
“In addition to that, if you’re not experienced with a chainsaw, don’t use it,” he said. “If you go to cut trees that are caught up in telecommunications or power lines, they’re under tension, and when you take that weight off and cutting that tree, it will spring back and it will it has the potential to kill you.”
Survey teams working to confirm possible tornadoes
The National Weather Service confirmed two tornados in Charleston County during Helene. The first touched down 2 miles east of Red Top as an EF0 with 80-mph winds. The second was 1 mile north-northeast of Rantowles as an EF0 with 65-mph winds.
National Weather Service Meteorologist John Quagiliariello said Beaufort County recorded one of the highest wind totals at 75 mph and that the National Weather Service issued 63 tornado warnings. It was unclear, however, how many tornados actually occurred.
He also said the National Weather Service will send out teams to assess the damage done by potential overlapping tornado tracks.
“It’s also going to be hard to determine whether damage we see out there was the result of just the strong tropical storm force wind gusts, or if it was an actual tornado. So that’s going to take some work and investigating on our part,” Quailaiariello said.
Quagiliariello said rainfall totals exceeded 15 inches in some parts of Oconee, Greenville and Pickens Counties and were as high as 10 to 15 inches in the Midlands. That water, he said, is now affecting rivers in the Upstate and Midlands resulting in moderate to major river flooding.
Department of Environmental Services Interim Director Myra Reece said her agency is monitoring the safety of more than 200 dams across the state.
Reece also said though they have reports of overtopping, there have been no reports of breaches at the time. She said they will continue to keep an eye on dams in the Carolinas.
“This storm has caused significant, perhaps historic, damage to the Duke Energy System,” Duke Energy State President Mike Callahan said.
The storm, which is a tropical depression as of Friday afternoon, made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph in the rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.
But the damage extended hundreds of miles to the north, with flooding as far away as North Carolina, where a lake used in scenes from the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam. Multiple hospitals in southern Georgia were without power, and one in Tennessee was closed.
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