‘Week of hell.’ How people in the SC Midlands are coping without power a week after Helene
When Paige Mills’ lights finally came back on in her Earlewood neighborhood home around 11 a.m. Thursday, it ended a 149-hour stretch without power following Hurricane Helene’s arrival in South Carolina.
“It’s been a week of hell, let me tell you,” Mills said. “I never thought I would go through something like this — not living an hour and a half from the coast.”
Mills is one of the estimated 365,000 people in South Carolina who still had no electricity on Thursday, one week after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and quickly barreled into the Palmetto State, flattening trees and power lines and flooding neighborhoods in the process. Richland County still had 3,509 power customers out Thursday afternoon, and Lexington County had 6,773.
Mills had a large oak tree in her neighbor’s yard collapse and take out the garage on her nearly century-old home and destroying her car. That not only meant she couldn’t drive anywhere, it also deprived her of a livelihood; she had signed up to make Instacart deliveries starting Monday.
Still, it could have been worse, she said. “If it had fallen a different way I could be dead,” she said. She and neighbor Steve Wilcox agreed after the storm they wouldn’t try to replace the fallen oak. “I hated raking up those damn leaves anyway.”
Across town in the Denny Terrace neighborhood, Dionne Tiller was still waiting for power to be restored. An instructional coach with Richland 1, Tiller took off work to stay home with her seven children.
She’s been frustrated with the slow response, even as she’s heard Dominion Energy announce that 95% of her Richland County neighbors have had their service restored. She said she hasn’t been able to get an idea from Dominion of when her lights might come back on, or even why they’ve been off so long. She hasn’t seen any power lines down in the area, and neighbors not too far away have their lights back on.
“It’s been hard. We feel cut off from the rest of the world. We’re disconnected from everyone, and everybody else is going about business as usual,” Tiller said. “On social media you see people getting their lights restored, posting updates, or taking pictures with the linemen. And I’m like, ‘That’s great, but can you send them this way?’”
In the meantime, Tiller’s family has been charging their cellphones in the car, and their laptops at a friend’s house. Some of her children had to get physical work packets from school because they couldn’t get online to do remote lessons from home while area schools were closed.
Her family has endured hot days without air conditioning, and because she lives near a wooded area, at night Tiller “didn’t want to leave window open and have something crawl in.” Her family used candles and flashlights until they got a generator that they plug a lamp and some fans into.
Back in Earlewood, the lack of air conditioning led Mills to spend a night sleeping on her front porch. She felt so exposed that “I slept out there with pepper spray in my hand,” she said. “But I just felt like I had no choice.”
Wilcox, Mills’ neighbor on the other side of the fallen tree, said he was looking forward to air conditioning now that his power was back on.
“I’m telling my wife we’re putting extra blankets on the bed, because I’m turning it down to 65 tonight,” he said.
Over the weekend, his brother brought over a generator, which he was happy to share with his neighbors as needed. That’s been a godsend for Mills, who has had to depend on her neighbors throughout the ordeal.
“I have a neighbor who brings me coffee every morning, who buys me dinner,” she said. “I have another neighbor who brings me dog and cat food, bread and peanut butter. ... I’ve met neighbors I didn’t know after 21 years living here.”
She had considered moving away from the home, which had previously belonged to her father and grandfather before. But after her experience this past week, she wants to stay in Earlewood for the rest of her life.
“I will never, ever find neighbors like this again,” she said.
This story was originally published October 4, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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