Welcome back. I took the summer off from writing updates for one big reason - a lot happened over the last few months in our family, and in particular to our home, something I’ll talk about in today’s post. I look forward to getting back to regular postings diving deep into what’s on our agenda in Fountain Inn and other relevant updates.
In the hours before Hurricane Helene’s treacherous winds and rain hit South Carolina a year ago today, our family made the decision to go stay at my parents house. Just down the road in Fountain Inn, we wanted to be sure we were all together and help them out should something happen to their home, or if we were unable to get to them the next morning.
The decision to be at my parents home instead of ours is one I attribute completely to God.
It wasn’t until about 7:30AM on September 27, 2024, after the bulk of the storm had passed, that we got a text from our neighbor’s daughter, a good friend of ours, asking how we were doing. We told her we were fine and at my parents’ house. We asked her how our home was, and it was then we learned that we were going to have to find a way to our home quickly.
On our way to our house, we saw neighbors working with our firefighters in my parents’ neighborhood, Quail Run, cutting through the tree blocking the only entrance and exit. As we drove down Main Street we saw dozens of trees laying on the ground, many of them sitting on, or through homes.
As best we can tell in the security camera footage, at about 6:00AM on September 27, 2024, a 250-year old oak tree in our backyard gave in to Helene’s 70mph sustained winds and 90mph gusts.
The tree went through the roof of our 120+ year old home, landing squarely on top of, and in, our daughter’s room and a significant portion of the back of our home.
When we got to our own home, we found our backyard chickens safe in their coop, and three other trees down in our backyard.
My wife and I ran inside.
Water was pouring in from the roof onto our daughter’s bed. Her closet had a large branch of the tree inside it. Our upstairs bathroom was completely smashed in. Water had found its way through the floor and into one of the rooms downstairs, with standing water all over the floor. Our back sunroom was crushed, our laundry room destroyed. Outside, an old stable-like storage building was barely recognizable underneath the tree’s trunk that was nearly six-feet in diameter.
We found our cat hiding in a closet and put her in a safe spot.
We were able to get a 30-second phone call over to my parents before the call dropped. My father was able to get out of their neighborhood and rushed over while our daughter, who was about to turn four just two weeks later, stayed with my mother.
Our next call was to our insurance company. With nearly no cell service in the area, I found a spot in front of Gio’s on Main Street where my call was crystal clear. We got the process started with them and then turned our attention to everything inside our home.
We gathered our most important belongings that first day, plus anything that was could be salvaged from the most damaged parts of our home. We found a hotel, one we would call home for about ten days before moving into a rental home in Fountain Inn, just a mile away from our home.
What followed after that morning has been the most consuming and challenging experience our family has gone through, and we’re still not done with it a year later.
As of today, our home is still down to the studs - it was gutted due to water and physical damage. We see light at the end of the tunnel - electrical is roughed in, plumbing is starting, and there’s been a lot of framing and internal work.
We should be waking up Christmas morning in our home again (fingers crossed).
We’re one of the lucky families amidst all of this, a fact we fully understand and appreciate. That morning we saw the videos from Asheville and surrounding areas and felt incredibly blessed to still have each other, our pets, most of belongings, a path forward for our home, and family and friends nearby to support us.
We’re doing fine, and we will be fine - and we are lucky in that regard.
I share our story because I think it’s important for us all to know that Helene’s impact is still reverberating in our area. And it’s not just us - families across the region are still without a permanent home, without a path forward, and many suffered tragic loss and damage that they may not fully recover from. Entire communities are still trying to recover from Helene in North Carolina. Major infrastructure is still being repaired or replaced. And our natural terrain in along rivers and streams is, in many cases, permanently altered.
Just around us in Fountain Inn, according to the SC Office of Resilence, there are still 363 active cases from Helene in the counties of Greenville and Laurens being managed by Disaster Case Managers. In total, over 116,000 individual assistance claims through FEMA were filed in the wake of Helene across Greenville and Laurens counties.
The road to recovery is long for many in our region.
In addition to calls with insurance, packing, clean up, and more - I was also checking in with our team, sitting in on staff calls, representing the City on county and state calls, meeting with our team, and communicating with various local, state, and federal agencies. I’ll admit, it was a challenge to balance the priority of tending to my family with making sure our city operations were adjusting as needed to serve our community. But our team and community stepped up.
I continue to be immensely proud of our employees and our community for how Fountain Inn handled those days following Helene. Our employees worked tirelessly to respond to the immense volume of public safety calls, clear mountains of debris, check in on our seniors, get our parks cleaned up, and support one another at every turn.
Neighbors helped neighbors, folks grabbed their chainsaws and worked around town helping anyone in need, churches and organizations provided vital resources, businesses helped each other and opened their doors as quick as possible so families could get the food and supplies they needed. Individuals stepped up to organize food drives and debris cleaning. In our worst moments, we came together.
I was prouder than ever to be part of this community, and it’s a pride that continues today.
