740K in SC still out of power after Helene. Here’s when lights could be back on for some
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Hurricane Helene
Hurricane Helene is gaining strength and is forecast to track north toward SC where it will bring heavy rain & strong winds to the Midlands.
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Nearly three quarters of a million South Carolina power customers remained in the dark Monday, days after powerful Hurricane Helene ripped through the state and region.
Meanwhile, one of South Carolina’s largest power providers has issued estimates as to when its customers in various counties could expect to see electricity back on.
As of noon on Monday, Sept. 30, there were 740,840 customers without electricity across the Palmetto State, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the nation.
As the storm went through South Carolina on Thursday and Friday, about 1.3 million customers had lost power.
“It’s going down steadily,” Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters during Monday’s news media briefing.
But it may be as late as Friday before most of the power is restored.
“One of the things that’s slowing us down is the choke points,” McMaster said. “We got all these electrical lines down. The soil was wet, trees went over, winds were adequate to knock the trees down, they knock the power lines down. So we have the power lines tangled up with trees and limbs.”
Re-opening roads blocked by downed trees will closely follow electricity restoration. Before crews can cut trees that are on downed power lines lying on roads, the lines need to be de-energized, Transportation Secretary Justin Powell said.
In the Midlands, roughly 18,000 customers remained without power in Richland County as of noon, while 29,000 customers in Lexington were out. Saluda had 9,200 power outages at that hour, while Newberry County has 13,596 customers without power. There were 66,000 power outages in Aiken County, as of noon.
Dominion Energy of South Carolina President Keller Kissam estimated about 1,000 electrical poles are broken in Aiken alone.
The electric coops had as many as 1,900 poles that were snapped and it takes a four-person crew four hours to replace one pole, said Rob Hochstetler, the president and CEO of the Central Electric Cooperative said.
The Upstate continued to deal with a plethora of outages on Monday, as that portion of the state was particularly hard hit by Helene.
Out of the 175,000 Spartanburg County customers tracked by PowerOutage.us, more than 154,000 were still out of power as of noon Monday. Meanwhile, 200,000 power customers in Greenville County were still out as of Monday at noon.
Duke Energy President Mike Callahan said it expects to have power restored for a vast majority of customers by Friday evening, with the exception to those who are inaccessible or unable to receive service.
“That doesn’t mean power will be out for everyone until Friday,” Callahan said. “It just means that the very last customer that we can restore might be as late as Friday night, but we’ll see many customers continue to come online well before that.”
In western SC, Greenwood County remained largely in the dark on Monday, with more nearly 27,000 outages.
Among the larger power providers in SC, Dominion Energy had about 100,000 outages across its system on Monday at noon, while Duke Energy had about 468,000 outages.
Crews from other states are coming into South Carolina to assist and Santee Cooper crews are beginning to assist other electric utilities in the state.
“I would like to say the Calvary is here, but the Calvary continues to show up. More people are showing up every day from these states, some as far away as Kansas and Iowa,” Hochstetler said.
Dominion Energy on Sunday released estimated times of restoration of power for its customers in a number of SC counties. Those were:
*Allendale: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
*Bamberg: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
*Barnwell: 11 p.m. Oct. 2
*Beaufort: 11 p.m. Oct. 1
*Berkeley: 11 p.m. Sept. 29
*Calhoun: 11 p.m. Sept. 29
*Colleton: 11 p.m. Sept. 30
*Dorchester: 11 p.m. Sept. 29
*Fairfield: 11 p.m. Oct. 4
*Hampton: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
*Jasper: 11 p.m. Oct. 2
*Kershaw: 11 p.m. Sept. 29
*Lexington: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
*Newberry: 11 p.m. Oct. 2
*Orangeburg: 11 p.m. Sept. 29
*Richland: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
*Union: 11 p.m. Oct. 3
Dominion listed several counties simply as “damage assessment in progress,” without estimated restoration dates, as of Monday morning. Those included Abbeville, Aiken, Edgefield, Greenwood, McCormick and Saluda.
This story was originally published September 30, 2024 at 8:07 AM with the headline "740K in SC still out of power after Helene. Here’s when lights could be back on for some."
