Erin Baldwin and her 14-year-old son, Silas, saw a mess when they looked down the street from their Forest Acres home Friday morning.
Lying across the road was a huge tree that had fallen overnight as Hurricane Helene whipped through the Columbia-area. Their neighbors’ yard was strewn with limbs and pine boughs that fell in the powerful, storm-driven winds.
“People with trees down are going to have problems for a while,’’ Baldwin said as she and Silas, a freshman at A.C. Flora High School, picked up the pine boughs from their neighbors’ yard. Their own property escaped tree damage, so they felt the need to help their friends.
Across Columbia and the state, some of the biggest casualties of Hurricane Helene were trees, from majestic oaks on the University of South Carolina campus to tall pines in Forest Acres just a few miles from downtown.
Many trees blocked roads Friday morning, including major in-town streets, like Heyward in Shandon, Pickens near USC and Trenholm near Clemson Avenue. Greene Street, a busy two-laned road between the USC campus and Five Points, was blocked for hours Friday after a massive hardwood fell. The tree hit several cars.