Wadmalaw residents wake to fallen trees, smashed cars, broken windows after Sunday storm

WADMALAW ISLAND — Vicky and Brent Griffith's home here used to be surrounded by trees, but on Monday scarcely a single one remained intact.

The Griffiths' brick ranch house off Maybank Highway was ground zero for the furious storm that visited the area on Sunday evening. The National Weather Service sent teams out Monday to investigate whether the system might have spawned one or several tornadoes.

"It's ironic because I had just finished working in the yard," Vicky Griffith remembered the following afternoon, as she, her husband and neighbors tried to clear away the fallen trees that blocked their driveway. "It was a beautiful day and I had been digging the flower beds."

She was near the back porch around 6:20 p.m. when she heard a snap and turned her head to see the first tree fall. She herded her 8-year-old son into an interior bathroom. Her husband followed after hurriedly trying to open windows to prevent the house from imploding.

They emerged later to see a fallen tree that cut straight through Brent Griffith's workshop building. Another tree smashed a 2008 Ford F-350 pickup with 900 miles on the odometer that he uses at his contracting job. Most of their windows of their house were blown in, with shards of glass and leaves strewn about the floor.

It could have been worse; neither the Griffiths nor their immediate neighbors had any serious injuries.

The Carolina Lowcountry Chapter of the American Red Cross was visiting affected neighborhoods because fallen trees prevented many residents from driving to an assistance center at the St. John's fire station. Louise Welch, regional executive director of the local Red Cross chapter, said on Monday afternoon that the organization expected to dole out about $6,000 worth of assistance. They had received reports of five houses with major damage that will require the residents to relocate, four with significant damage that wouldn't prevent anybody from staying and 15 others with lesser problems such as broken windows.

The following day, volunteers were dispensing ice and water to those without power. Counselors also provided emotional comfort, Welch said.

At peak of the outages on Sunday, several thousand people were in the dark. Monday afternoon, almost everyone had electricity back.

About 3,000 Berkeley Electric Cooperative customers were affected on Sunday, said Micah Ponce, a communications specialist with the utility.

In the approximately two thirds of the state that South Carolina Electric and Gas Co. serves, about 13,000 people were without power at the height of the outage between 10 and 11 a.m. Sunday, said Robin Montgomery, SCE&G's southern division public affairs manager. The time corresponded to an earlier storm system that was less severe than the one that passed through in the evening. About 4,800 Lowcountry customers lost power in all, Montgomery said.

Read more in Tuesday's edition of The Post and Courier.