Unexpected news: Abbeville sc community destroyed by fired outbreak just now….. more details ⬇️⬇️

Mayor Trey Edwards understates the fact. Hurricane Helene hammered Abbeville. The result was the entire town lost power.

Areas of the county are not much better. Calhoun Falls Mayor Terrico Holland said the town was without power until about 6 p.m. Monday when power was restored to a few customers.

He has been in regular contact with Dominion Energy. Holland said there is no timeline as to when power will be fully restored.

By early Monday, only about 15% of Abbeville had power restored, according to Mike Clary, the city’s deputy administrative officer. It was hoped more of the city would get power by Monday evening.

Nobody can say when power will be fully restored to the city, said Edwards, who declined to sugarcoat the situation. The goal is to have most of power back by Friday. As far as residents, Edwards said late Monday that he has no idea how many people have power.

Abbeville Area Medical Center was a main concern as it had lost power from the storm, he said. It has power now, Court Square area has power again, and areas near Highway 72 have power, along with Wildwood Estates and part of South Main Street.

Crews are still assessing damage, he said. There will be no useful answer until all transmission lines are back up.

According to a late Monday outage report from Duke Energy, about 1,000 customers in the Abbeville area did not have electricity.

For much of the western half of South Carolina, it will take at least a week before power is completely restored, according to Little River Electric Cooperative’s website.

There are about 282,000 outages for co-op members statewide, down from a peak of 425,000 Friday morning.

For co-ops in the Upstate and along the western border of South Carolina, this is not a simple restoration job. This is a rebuild of its electric system, according to the cooperative. At least 1,400 power poles were snapped and need to be replaced.

Recovery will require four to six months of the cooperative’s usual supply of overhead line materials — about the same volume of material needed to respond to Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Crews from Santee Cooper and Tallahassee, Florida, have helped restoration efforts, Edwards said.

The city of Abbeville and Abbeville County also are working with state and federal agencies and are compiling documentation to submit to FEMA regarding making Abbeville County

eligible for federal disaster assistance,

Edwards said in a Facebook post.