Thousands without power in York, Chester, Lancaster after storm rips through SC
Thousands of residents in York, Chester and Lancaster counties in Upstate South Carolina were without power late Thursday and into the evening after storms brought periods of heavy rains and high winds, officials said.
York Electric Cooperative reported about 3,000 outages in York and Lancaster counties at 5:30 p.m., according to its online outage map.
The York County outages were mainly in western York County, but had spots ranging east to Rock Hill, Fort Mill and Lake Wylie, the map showed.
The National Weather Service issued a special weather statement and severe thunderstorm watch that cautioned that rain as well as winds as high as 40 mph were possible through Thursday night.
Chuck Haynes, York County Emergency Management Director, said the power outages were mainly from downed trees on power lines.
The Lancaster County outages were found north of S.C. 5 through the panhandle of Lancaster to the border with Charlotte, said Darren Player, emergency management director.
Duke Energy reported more than 1,000 outages in Chester County alone with the bulk of the outages near the city of Chester, the utility’s outage map showed.
Storms close by in Cherokee County in South Carolina, just west of York, and in Charlotte and Union County in bordering North Carolina counties, had more than 50,000 people without power service in both Carolinas as of 5:30 p.m.
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