Tropical Storm Helene snapped utility poles and downed lines across South Carolina on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, particularly in the Upstate and along the Georgia border. Columnist Paul Hyde, who lives in Anderson, reports his city was a mess of fallen trees and hanging power lines. (Paul Hyde/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Widespread and lingering power outages far from coastal cities more accustomed to dealing with hurricanes have prompted conversations about what more utilities could do in South Carolina to get the lights back on sooner.
Outages from Helene in South Carolina, Florida and Georgia peaked at around 1.3 million customers each, according to multiple news outlets and archived data from PowerOutage.US. In North Carolina, outages reached 1.5 million, according to reports from Duke Energy and the state’s power cooperatives…