Storm hits Dillon, Robeson communities hard

Residents said the event lasted less then a minute, but it was enough time for a tornado to cause extensive damage along the South Carolina, North Carolina boarder and other parts of the Pee Dee.

“The clouds were dark,” Rick Gardner said. “And it started raining and all of a sudden ‘boom, boom, boom!’ And it was on!”

Gardner, along with his son Quinton were inside their Little Rock home, a town several miles north of Dillon on SC Hwy 9, when the tornado passed through. It was powerful enough to bend a portion of their shed’s metal roof and throw several large piece of metal hurtling across the street and into their neighbor’s yard.

That yard belonged to Vanetta Graves, who was sleeping when the storm hit as her two children, A’doshia, 12, and Quedregus, 4, played in a nearby room.

“All of a sudden the kids come running through my bedroom hollering, ‘Ma! The stuff is falling! The stuff is falling!’” Graves said. “And the ceiling in my daughter’s bedroom, it had fell all the way down.”

The storm sent three people to the hospital where they were treated and released, according to a statement from the National Weather Service.

It was a similar story across the boarder in North and the town of Rowland. Also hit by the storm local police and Robeson County Sheriff’s Department placed the community on lock down, not allowing non-residents entrance along US 301.

Most of the damage in that area occurred east of that highway, with downed trees and power lines that left much of the town without electricity.

"No injuries, thank the Lord for that," Robeson County Sheriff Kenneth Sealey said of his county, which had several communities beyond Rowland hit by the storm.

Another area hard hit was Barker Ten Mile Road where homes and cars were reported damaged, Sealey said.

In Little Rock, high winds toppled trees and blew down an abandoned building at the intersection of SC 9 and Harllees Bridge Road.

Dillon County fire officials were working their way through the community to make sure nobody was trapped or otherwise hurt by the storm.

"At least five trees on homes" in the Little Rock community were reported to National Weather Service officials.

Columbus County officials reported a tornado on the ground southwest of Clarkton and Georgetown County officials reported trees blown down by a tornado southwest of Andrews.

In St. Stephens the Refuge Temple Church collapsed on worshipers as the storm blew through, injuring six.

Elsewhere in the Pee Dee, high winds, downed power lines and fallen trees were abundant.

Windy Hill and South Lynches Volunteer Fire Departments, one at the northern tip and the other at the southern tip of Florence County, responded to several calls of downed trees on roads.

South Lynches Fire Chief Sam Brockington said high winds ahead of the storms caused a transformer to spark and start a brush fire.

Progress Energy's outage map showed scattered outages throughout the Pee Dee, with Lee and Williamsburg Counties reporting at 3:50 p.m. the highest numbers of customers left in the dark with more than 600 in each county.

Throughout the Eastern Carolinas, Progress Energy officials said more than 175,000 customers were left without power and some may not get it back anytime soon.

"Due to damage that has occurred to several large transmission structures, some areas hardest hit by the tornadoes and severe weather may require multiple days to restore," according to a release issued by Progress Energy.

Progress Energy was not the only utility working to recover from the storms.

An explosion at a Hemingway substation has left thousands without electricity.

The 6 p.m. blast started with a single transformer at the Santee Electric substation in Hemingway and ended when the entire substation was destroyed.

Adrel Langley, manager of community relations with Santee Electric Cooperative, said the company is doing everything it can to restore power to the areas affected -- many areas around Hemingway but not the town itself.

“We had a complete loss of the Hemingway substation that serves about 2,500 customers in the surrounding area of Hemingway,” Langley said.

“With the weather the way that it was this afternoon, speculation would say that it was weather related.  Until we do an investigation, we can’t definitively say what caused it,” Langley said.

Crews would be out working on the system until power is restored, she said.