David Shaw awoke in the early morning of Sept. 27 to the world coming undone.
Shattering glass. The floor rocking beneath him. The crunch and scream of twisting metal and the slashing branches that twisted it.
The churning, black chaos of Helene had punctured the walls of his Anderson mobile home and now raged inside his bedroom.
He screamed her name as he leapt up from bed: Christine.
Shaw's longtime partner, Christine Schmeiske, was also in the trailer when a massive oak crumpled its ceiling and cut into its interior.
But Shaw couldn't reach her. He was trapped, his only path forward was up.
Groping in the darkness and branches, he climbed the tree to the roof. From there, he climbed down another limb to the road, where neighbors offered help and a pair of shoes to cover his bare feet.
David Shaw and his friend search search for his cat Cotton after a tree fell on the trailer during Helene, killing his partner Christine Schmeiske.
It was only in the wake of the chaos that Shaw learned Schmeiske, 55, had been killed when the tree struck the home they had shared for roughly a decade.
"She was my everything," he said, tears filling his eyes as he stood in front of the remnants of his trailer the afternoon of Sept. 27, hours after Helene had torn through the Upstate. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
Schmeiske was one of at least 22 lives claimed in South Carolina as Helene tore its path through the Southeast, a death toll that continues to rise.
In the Upstate, at least 11 were killed — five in Spartanburg County, four in Greenville County, and two in Anderson County, including Schmeiske.
Tropical Storm Helene brought a tree down on David Shaw and Christine Schmeiske home in Anderson in the early morning of Sept. 27, killing 55-year-old Schmeiske.
More than 600,000 homes remained without power in the northwest corner of the state as of Friday evening, with Duke Energy predicting restoration could take days.
Anderson County Administrator Rusty Burns described the storm and its aftermath as the “worst natural disaster that has ever affected the entire county, bar none.”
Helene rendered neighborhoods across the area almost unrecognizable.
A few blocks away from Shaw's home, a stretch of South Prevost Street was virtually buried in fallen trees and snapped utility poles. On the other side of town, Bellview Road was lined with debris and toppled oaks.
Powerful winds brought by Tropical Storm Helene virtually buried a stretch of South Prevost Street in Anderson in fallen trees and snapped utility poles in the early morning of Sept. 27.
Burns said no corner of the county was left untouched, and recovery would likely take weeks.
But for some, what has been lost can never be recovered.
Friday afternoon, Shaw picked through the wreckage of his ruined home. When the tree came down, his pets had fled in the confusion. He and a friend were looking for one, his still-missing cat.
"Cotton, Cotton," Shaw called as he stepped into the wide gash in the trailer, navigating branches, shattered siding and tufts of pink insulation.
Cotton was nowhere to be found, but Shaw continued the search, holding onto the hope of reuniting with his missing pet.
With Schmeiske gone and his home destroyed, what would come next was less clear.