‘Just heartbreaking’: Bamberg mayor, others lament losses in storm

BAMBERG, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Bamberg lost important pieces of its history when a tornado swept through town Tuesday.

It appears the old Bamberg City Hall may have been destroyed.

On Wednesday, crews were assessing the damage from Tuesday’s powerful storm. We know at least four downtown buildings and several local businesses have been damaged.

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Mayor Nancy Foster says the downtown buildings are more than 100 years old

“It’s been bad,” she said. “It’s just heartbreaking. All this started back to 2:30, I believe, and, and I’m getting calls that the buildings downtown are falling in the street.”

The community of 3,500 is left to pick up the heart of the city.

“Downtown’s my ion. Those buildings were from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. So, I just hate to see them go. And I’m not sure we can salvage those three buildings,” said Foster.

Officials said three different power companies were working to turn the lights back on.

Foster says crews are having to make entirely new power poles. She says it’s going to take some time before things get back to normal.

“It’s a lot of debris, a lot of turned up, a lot of trees down. And I think we did have some, I don’t know, how many houses we had that there’s damage,” said Foster.

But the impact goes beyond downtown as the city is now trying to recover from this major storm.

“It really wasn’t that bad when we left the house. But as soon as we came through, this red light, undoubtedly, that tornado was right behind us. Maybe 10 seconds when we cleared the red light. You couldn’t see the Piggly Wiggly. It was completely black,” said resident Buzzy Bunch.

The last tornado hit the outskirts of the county back in 2022, but the damage was nothing like this.

Piggly Wiggly cashier Sarah Smith said: “I have never experienced a tornado being that close to me. You know, my room window. And I heard the rolling noise. Oh, man. I was scared.”

She tried to take shelter, but it all happened so fast.

“When I looked down, the tree had fallen and it fell on the power line and my side yard and power went out. It was completely dark. So right about this moment in time without power, I don’t have any heat, or anything of that nature,” she said.

Smith’s house wasn’t damaged too badly, but others weren’t so lucky.

“You had this eerie feeling. You couldn’t see. But you can see, you could feel it. And it was crazy,” said Bunch.

His wife’s shop was destroyed.

“We’ll dive in and see what we can do, what we can salvage. I know, one side of her shop is, I can already tell this is 10 feet deep and breaks the other side. Possibly there’s something we can make salvage out of,” said Bunch.

Now they are trying to figure out what to do next.

“We’ve had some hurricanes come through. Not quite as bad for the downtown area. But Bamberg family, everybody. Everybody loves everybody. We pitch in. If a neighbor’s got a tree down, there’s neighbors right there to clean it up. You know, so I’m just blessed to be in a small town that loves everybody and pitch in and help out,” he said.

Former South Carolina Gov. and presidential candidate Nikki Haley took to Twitter when she heard about what happened to Bamberg.

She wrote, “My heart breaks hearing about the storm damage in my sweet hometown. The people are tough and resilient. I know with love and prayer they will rebuild stronger than they were before.”