County officials working around the clock, assessing damage

A map of Laurens County is attached to a long blue trailer that typically houses the Charleston County Unified Mobile Command.

That’s in the parking lot outside the county’s Hillcrest office and judicial complex. Inside, conference rooms are bustling with people, while cots have been set up in offices and any unused spaces for employees and volunteers who have been at the complex since Thursday as Hurricane Helene swept through Laurens County and left devastation in its wake.

All of it is part of a command and operations center set up by Laurens County officials as emergency personnel start the first phases of rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene. The storm has left thousands without electricity and other basic needs and caused at least three deaths in the county.

“As far as the county personnel goes, they’ve been working around the clock, particularly when the storm started rolling in,” said County Administrator Thomas Higgs, a S.C. National Guard officer and search-and-rescue veteran often deployed to other areas seeking relief from natural disasters. “They were out there during the storm. All of the county employees were doing what they could to simply provide basic humanitarian needs.

“We’re still in a rescue phase at this moment, meaning we’re focused on life safety efforts to keep people hydrated, to get food in stomachs and cut them out if they’re trapped in houses – those types of things. We’re trying to do an assessment of where everybody’s at and do what we can do.”

The group of emergency personnel gathered around the Charleston mobile command center continued to grow as the morning went on and included county and city law enforcement, firefighters from every local department and city employees from Laurens and Clinton.

Laurens County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chris Martin said his agency has been “all hands on deck” since just before the storm moved through town last week.

“It’s been a group effort between everybody to get roads open, to get services to people that need them,” Martin said.

Deputies were provided chainsaws immediately after the storm moved through to carry with them on patrols, so they could begin to help clearing roads for emergency vehicles if needed.

“Robertson’s Ace Hardware (in Laurens) opened their doors up in the midst of the storm and let us buy six or seven chainsaws,” Martin said. “We’ve pushed them out to the deputies on the road, and they’ve just been rotating them and cutting trees, so if there are emergency calls (the roads) are accessible.”

Robertson’s also received a shipment of several hundred generators on Saturday, and its Laurens location was filled with those looking to restore temporary power to their homes. As of Tuesday morning, Laurens Electric Cooperative reported that about half of its customers in Laurens and neighboring counties have had their power restored.

Laurens Electric, the City of Clinton and City of Laurens Commission of Public Works all receive electricity via Duke Energy. Downed Duke transmission lines caused massive outages that initially affected more than 500,000 people across the Upstate.

Laurens Electric reported Tuesday that about half its customers’ power had been restored. On Monday, Laurens CPW reported 2,286 (42.7%) of its customers were still without power.

In Laurens, crews from Alabama, Missouri, Ohio and Kentucky have worked to restore power since the weekend, while local businesses with power offered affected residents a chance to charge devices and relax in the air conditioning.

Officers from the S.C. Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and the soldiers from the S.C. Army National Guard were also helping with recovery efforts Tuesday. The National Guard was setting up a supply distribution truck at the county offices at 105 Bolt Drive in Laurens, and the 117th Engineer Brigade was deployed out of Newberry to help clear roads as local officials and volunteers assesses damage and needs throughout the county.

“We’ll soon be moving into a recovery phase,” Higgs said. “That’s more of a, ‘How do we build things? How do we get more roads clear?’ But the core goal is protecting life and safety.”