ORANGEBURG COUNTY, S.C. — Orangeburg County is beginning to recover from damage from Hurricane Helene.
Early Friday morning, Orangeburg County experienced several tornado warnings. Although Emergency Services said they do not have any confirmed tornado touchdowns, there was severe damage from winds.
Some of those damages include trees on houses, trees on roads, electrical power lines down, residents without power and more.
Kendrell Boneparte was one of those residents who lost electricity. He said the storm was scary. “Last night I heard a bunch of booming transformers, bussing, trees popping, a lot of heavy wind. You know, it was very scary, but I’m just glad that nothing bad really happened.”
Chief Charles Austin with Orangeburg Department of Public Safety says keeping safe is the priority as clean up begins.
“If you see a downed line please do not go to pick it up to see if its live assume that it is,” said Austin. “Either call the department of public utilities or call police headquarters dispatch and we will make sure the word gets to the department of public utilities.”
In the town of Woodford, a resident had his shed turned completely over by the wind. SCDOT had to come in and clean the debris off the street.
Sidney Livingston said he couldn’t do anything to save his shed from being damaged.
“Well, sometime this morning 3 or 4 o’clock, it picked up ... I got up a couple times to hear the warning on the telephone," Livingston said. "I couldn’t do nothing about it. I went back to bed. I got up this morning, it was a big surprise to see it flipped over in the street.”
Billy Staley with Orangeburg County Emergency Services says they are working hard to get roads cleared up and electricity turned back on.
“Through the night, the winds picked up so we got quite a few trees down this morning. Really recommending not everyone come out and move around. Stay home if you don’t have to get out. Give us a chance to get the trees up get the powerlines up back up,” Staley said.
“We’ve got about 20,000 people or 20,000 customers without power that we’re working on getting restored with the power company," Staley continued. "Some of those restorations are going to take awhile simply because we gotta wait for the winds to go down before the bucket trucks can get up and put the power lines back up, and we can't cut some of the trees out the road until the power lines get cleared.”
Orangeburg County Emergency Services says they will not have a countywide damage estimate for the next few days but they are asking resident to continue to report damages here.