LEXINGTON, S.C. — The town of Lexington and the town of Irmo still have an abundance of homes and businesses without power in the aftermath of Helene.
Raven Rodriguez lives in Augusta and is on his fourth trip to Lexington for supplies. He says gas, ice and groceries are a priority for his family and friends as they are being told they won't have power for weeks.
“I’ve been going back and forth with like nine gas cans, filling them up bringing them back to my friends and telling them, 'Hey, look I found some gas stations, you know? So hopefully this help you out,'" Rodriguez said. "So, now we’re doing water next and food supplies, so we’re just doing runs back and forth to Augusta.”
Albert Robinson lives in Saluda. He drove around his hometown, then over to Batesburg-Leesville and finally found gas in Lexington.
“This is about the fifth station, and all up through Lexington nobody has no gas whatsoever, so we just kept riding and riding, and we saw weren’t no cars out here, so I pulled out here to see if there was any gas," Robinson said. "So, we just got lucky. We finally got a fill up of gas, and I got some extra for my generator. So at this point, we’re good to go for now cause there’s no electricity in Batesburg-Leesville or Saluda.”
Viren Patel owns Friarsgate Supermart. He lost power last week, causing many of his products such as meats, frozen and refrigerated goods to go bad.
He says that in over 15 years of his business he has never had such a big loss.
“I had to throw away a lot of the frozen items that I had, close to $7,000-$8,000 worth of frozen items I had to throw away," Patel said. "I still had to throw away some stuff, which is like ice cream. I got a delivery on Wednesday, Tuesday with my frozen items and then the lights went off.”
Dominion Energy says they expect 95% restoration in Lexington County by October 3rd at 11pm.