Copyright postandcourier
One year ago today Aiken became unrecognizable overnight. On Sept. 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene made its way from Georgia into the Palmetto State with crushing results. Preparing for the arrival of the storm, my wife and I retreated to the downstairs bedroom for the night – a night that produced a lot of stress and not much sleep. In what we felt was the safety of our first-floor room, we heard wind howling and rain beating against our windows. The sound of branches and pine cones falling onto the roof was an ominous foretelling of what was to come. A loud crack that could only have been the trunk of a tree snapping left me breathless as I waited for the sound of its landing and hoped it would not end up on a house. Boom! It landed somewhere nearby, but hit wet earth and not a structure. There was no use in trying to explore what was happening outside since dark clouds covered any heavenly luminescence there might have been. And then, I believe it was 4:56, everything went quiet in our home. The fan in the bedroom stopped its steady hum. Outside lights went out. Within seconds our neighbor’s full-house generator roared on, the sound that would be with us for the better part of a week. Morning’s light gave us the first opportunity to explore the devastation outside as the rain had subsided and winds calmed. As many others have said, it looked as though a bomb had exploded leaving huge branches and large trees littering yards. Our street was impassible. The tree snapping I had heard during the night proved to belong to our across-the-street neighbor. A large pine had fallen away from their house and neatly landed between their driveway and their next door neighbor’s. But it still blocked the street until what were once the tree-top limbs could be cut away and moved. But that was just the beginning. We learned that many homes in our neighborhood, Aiken Estates, had not fared well. Trees were lying across roofs. Giant pines 60 and 70 years old were uprooted. Power lines had fallen onto streets, and getting around in any way other than on foot was nearly impossible.
