LANDRUM — While Sparkle City slowly regains power, Landrum is still in total darkness.
The small city 25 miles northwest of Spartanburg with just under 2,500 residents near the North Carolina border has been 100 percent without power since Tropical Storm Helene ravaged the Upstate in the early hours of Sept. 27.
Forecasters projected Helene would veer west, sparing large portions of South Carolina. But instead the storm blew almost directly on top of Spartanburg County, wreaking catastrophic damage upon a region unaccustomed to storms more commonly associated with the coast.
“I'm 53 years old. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” said Mark Bishop, pastor of First Baptist Landrum. “It is unparalleled.”
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Only a few days after the storm, the city’s main street chugged along almost unnoticeably. A passerby would only have to look into one of the downtown’s many dim windows to realize almost all of the businesses were closed, inoperable without power.
Three people also lost their lives in Landrum because of the storm, two of them residents. South Carolina’s total death toll is at least 40 people.
In the storm's wake, Bishop and his congregation hosted a free dinner at the church, an example of the many acts of kindness to come out of the destruction.
While Western North Carolina reels from even worse damage, he said he’s blessed to have a home to go to, even if it's without air conditioning.
“I can at least go home and put my head on a pillow in my own bed with a roof over me tonight,” he said, standing in front of a boiling fryer outside the church. “In the grand scheme of things, we're very blessed. And we want to pass that blessing along.”
A '100-year' storm
Bob Briggs, the city’s mayor, said he has not seen a disaster like Helene. He estimated there were 50 trees down in the area blocking roads after the storm.
Landrum’s communication with the outside world has been difficult. The area’s in a dead spot, rendering phones’ cellular service useless, No power means no internet.
As many Upstate residents are becoming frustrated by the lack of power, Briggs did not blame anyone for the destruction and mentioned Landrum was not the hardest hit community.
“This is like a 100-year storm,” he said. “These things don't happen very often.”
Just 5 miles south of Landrum down Interstate 26 lies Campobello, a town of fewer than 700 residents. Its mayor, Jason Shamis, estimated around 20 percent of the community had regained power.
One of the biggest issues facing the town has been a lack of access to water for those on its outskirts because they rely on wells and the water might not be safe.
“We're trying to figure out how to get them water,” Shamis said. “It’s kind of hard.”
Growing up in Charleston, Shamis endured two weeks without power after Hurricane Hugo. Still, he doesn’t think anyone was prepared for the extent of the damage Helene brought to the region.
But he isn’t questioning anyone’s preparedness, because of the unpredictability of such storms.
“It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and look back and say: ‘We should have done this, we should have done that.’ I think everybody was as prepared as they could be for what they thought was coming,” he said.
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Was the Upstate prepared for Helene?
Some wish the area was more ready for the storm. As of late on Oct. 2, more than half of all customers in Spartanburg County are still without power.
State Rep. Josiah Magnuson, who represents the rural District 38 that covers much of northern Spartanburg County, said the lack of preparedness was frustrating.
He said he was begging for bottled water most of Sept. 29. It didn't come until the following night — an example of too few resources being on hand to help, Magnuson said.
“I would have liked to have seen more preparedness, more resources on hand,” Magnuson said. “That's not to point fingers at anybody. It's just to say we all need to do a better job of being ready for these sorts of events.”
Magnuson said the area needed better energy infrastructure. He’d like to look at strengthening the area’s grid to protect substations and ensure there are plenty of reliable energy sources.
But with the bad also comes the good. Magnuson said he’s seen neighbors helping neighbors.
Jamie Murphy, a member of First Baptist Landrum, was one of those helping out the free dinner. As the Southern Fusion BBQ Barn restaurant owner, he was more than ready to prepare dinners for locals in need.
“I've got all this equipment for cooking food,” Murphy said. “I reached out to the pastor yesterday and said, ‘Hey, do you want to fry chicken tonight?’ He said that’s a great idea.”