Overnight storms force Anderson community to work together to rebuild

ANDERSON, S.C – After storms Wednesday night blew into the Upstate, knocking down a roof , many residents in Anderson woke up to different things.

For residents like Brock Baker, 9, he saw a tree previously rooted next to his bedroom window, now leaning against his neighbor’s house.

His older sister Meriwhether Baker, said she had debris everywhere the next morning. But with Anderson County School Districts 2 and 5 switching to E-learning days , and more than 15,000 homes in the county without power at one point, according to Duke Energy , the Baker children decided to use their time away from devices and help out the community.

“We’ve just been running around people’s houses and helping pick up like tree limbs and stuff,” said Meriwether.

Her brother helped out as well, with the kids grabbing friends to make the neighborhood tidier. Their actions didn’t go unnoticed by others.

“Neighbors helping neighbors,” said Kyle Cash, a tree cutter with Next Level Tree and Excavation. “You see people on the road with carts picking stuff up for everybody.”

Even Cash’s boss, Nate Hopman, pointed out a dangling branch over a home they had been working on and told 7NEWS, that no matter if they’re paid to or not, they’ll do what needs to be done to make sure everyone is safe from the trees.

“Everybody kind of pulled together as a group effort to try and get everything back to normal because this was a serious storm,” said Hopman.

Even longtime Anderson resident Dana Newell, walking her dog Bo, noticed people coming together to help others.

“It looked like people were helping with getting their chainsaws and just starting to cut around [trees],” said Newell.

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