Hurricane Helene knocked out power to more than 190,000 homes in Richland County, and 95% of them had regained power by Oct. 2.Among the unlucky 5% was USC student Matthew Snyder, who lived without power for two weeks.
On the morning of Sept. 29, Snyder, who is a graduate student in the master of sport and entertainment management program, was startled by what he thought was a thunderstorm.
“And around 5 a.m. I saw a blue flash and a big thud, and I thought, 'Oh crap, here comes a thunderstorm,'” he said. “So I was like, all right, just hunker down. Power went immediately off, because I usually have the TV on when I sleep. So I knew exactly when the TV went off, power went off.”
Once Helene had passed, Snyder said he discovered the source of the lights and sounds.
“Around 9 a.m. the storm passed," Snyder said. "It was just some wind. (I) looked outside and saw this massive oak tree just laying in the middle of Gregg Street, blocked off the entire street.”
The oak was not the only hazard. Venturing onto his fire escape, he found that the tree had taken with it a number of wires and cables, he said.
"Wires just in the street, all across the tree, underneath the tree and then two cars were crushed under this massive oak tree," he said.
The alarm of one ruined car blared until its battery died, and it would be six days before the tree was cleared from the street, he said.
The delay stemmed from an apparent disagreement involving a neighboring property, he said. The property owner refused to pay for clearing the fallen tree and requested that city clean-up crews handle it instead, Snyder said. No crews came to clear it because it was not their responsibility, he said.
Eventually, the intervention of a police officer led to the tree being cleared, Snyder said.
While the tree remained down, Snyder had to adjust to life without power or even a refrigerator to store food in. The loss of power meant the loss of weeks worth of his refrigerated food.
“And I cried when I had to throw away all the food that I just bought,” he said. “I was like, this is like three or four weeks of food for me that I'm literally throwing away because they all got, like, spoiled.”
Initially, Snyder attempted to continue living in the apartment. Once that became impossible, he sought out alternative places to stay.
“But in the very beginning where it was like the first few days, and I was like, screw this, I can't,” he said. “It was getting up to 80 plus degrees in my apartment with no air flow. I couldn't sleep. It was rough, to the point where I was just like, I need to get out of here.”
His employers in Russell House provided him a place to charge his devices and work on assignments, he said. For everything else, he settled on a hotel.
But circumstances sullied that option for him. Come the weekend of USC's game against Ole Miss, cost issues arose at the hotel, he said.
"So they were like, if you want to stay that night, it went up $150 a night because of the game in the area," he said. "It went from like $91 a night to $240 a night. It was ridiculous.”
Fortunately, a friend of Snyder's provided him a place to stay for several days after leaving the hotel, he said.
After staying with his friend, Snyder returned to his apartment in the hopes that power would be restored that night, he said. Unfortunately, power remained off until the next day, he said.
He spent one final, uncomfortable night in the apartment.
“But what made it really unbearable is that my building's a historic building, so the windows were designed to be nailed shut because there's no security thing on there, so they're nailed shut and painted shut,” he said. “So I couldn't even open up the windows for air flow.”
Power was restored the next day, he said.
Even after power was restored, more issues remained. Snyder’s water supply was not adequately restored.
“It's low pressure, but it's at least livable,” he said. “Like, it's still clean coming out, it doesn't look brown or anything. I just think, because it's leaking out of the one pipe that's lowering our pressure, so that's the only downside to that, but still enough to take a shower and still enough to like get water to drink and stuff like that.”
When the oak fell, it damaged a water pipe in a neighboring building, he said. Debris from the tree, including a large section of the trunk, remain on both sides of Gregg Street, preventing crews from fixing the pipe.
“There's actually water still running down the street that no one's been able to turn off, because it actually damaged the pipe, and no one's touching it," he said.
Gregg Street remained closed until Nov. 6 when crews came to remove the remaining debris and fix the damaged pipe, he said.
Snyder continues to progress academically despite the two-week interruption. He plans to graduate in December and enter the job market, he said.
Although power has been restored, Snyder said he plans to live elsewhere.
“Even if I get a job at, say, by some miracle, I get a job here at the university, I'm still going to be looking to move somewhere else at the end of December,” he said. “I'm not going to extend that lease anymore.”