FAIRFIELD COUNTY, S.C. — The Midlands was hit with severe storms Wednesday night, with Fairfield County being one of the most impacted. County officials say clean up began early this morning with crews restoring power and clearing roads.
“Around 3 am, we were woken up with the rain, the wind and the thunder,” Jennifer Ledley said.
Ledley is one of many residents who was impacted by the storm that came through the Midlands Wednesday night.
“The storm seemed to pass through, it didn’t linger overhead, it seemed like it past through within a half an hour to an hour so I was thankful that it was a quick storm that moved rather quickly so that was good that we got our power back by the time we had to get ready for work,” she said.
As the storm passed through Fairfield county, many residents lost power with several trees knocking down power lines.
“It kind of came out of nowhere, it kind of surprised everyone, everyone woke up at 3 this morning with the tornado warning that went off I talked to our emergency management director she said at the peak we lost maybe 200 people who were out of power at one time,” Gene Stephens said.
Stephens is the public information officer for Fairfield county, he says they prepare for heavy storms like these.
“Once that storm hits our emergency management team goes into activation, she's looking for updates, our public works department when they come in they're checking all the roads that we maintain to make sure that there's no debris so they're kind of doing a scouring search to get a few calls you know to help you know give them leads and stuff like that but basically they go around looking for areas that need to be cleaned up,” he said.
The SC Department of Transportation says they cleared about 50 trees in area.
“We have large areas in the county where if a line gets cut or gets interfered with, you’ll have a whole section that will be out of power. We do get that a good bit but our linemen are amazing they get stuff back up very quickly,” Stephens said.
Around 3 pm Thursday, there were still 54 homes in the area without power, according to county officials.
“They would call their power company directly and report the outage, even if you think okay, well all my neighbors out they already called go ahead call. That way it shows if you have a big block of houses that are out of power, that gives them a priority and you come and take care of that area,” Stephens said.
As of 4pm Thursday, SCDOT told News 19 they cleared all the trees down in the area.