Greenwood County trees earn their keep — until they don't
This is Piedmont country: loblolly and shortleaf pine on the ridges, water oaks and willow oaks over the older streets of the Emerald City, sweetgums volunteering along every fence line, and pecans standing in yards from Coronaca to Troy. They shade the porch in a South Carolina August and they frame every view of Lake Greenwood — right up until the red clay gets saturated, the wind gets up, and a sixty-footer decides to lie down.
Anyone here in September 2024 doesn't need that explained. When Helene tore through the Upstate, county officials reported trees or debris across every major road into Greenwood, and all but about a thousand of the county's 28,000 electric customers lost power. The trees that fell that morning were the same leaners and half-dead pines people had been meaning to deal with. Handling the next one early is the whole game.
