At the end of September, the category four hurricane Helene hit the American mainland, leaving a trail of devastation across hundreds of miles and multiple states. Hundreds have died, and many more have lost their homes. We spoke to one Warhammer 40k fan about his experiences during the storm, which ripped open his home and demolished a model collection he had invested over a thousand hours in.
Toby – who prefers to be known by a pseudonym – has a home in a community outside Greenville, South Carolina. When we spoke he was staying with family about an hour away, as damage to the house means it’s “not liveable at the moment”. He got into Warhammer 40k in 2019, and his friendship group converted to playing the game in earnest during the 2020 pandemic.
Toby’s collection included sizeable armies for multiple Warhammer 40k factions. He started with Adeptus Mechanicus, building up a force of over 5,000 points before he “delved into Imperial Knights, as they allied really well”. They were the centerpiece of his collection, “all painted to my highest standard with some cool scenic basing”.
To provide a more melee-focused army he also built a massive collection of Blood Angels Space Marines, and then “spent 140 hours and three months building and painting” a Leagues of Votann army for a slow-grow campaign at his local gaming store (LGS).
He became aware of the approach of hurricane Helene “about one week prior” to its arrival, midway into a planned 77 mile hike. The persistent and ever growing rain forced him to cut the trip short, and he made it back home by Wednesday, September 25. “I did the normal hurricane prep, moved everything that’s outside the house into the garage”, he says. Hurricanes are not unheard of in upstate South Carolina, but “normally they are just tropical storms that bring some rain and some wind”.
It rained all the way from Wednesday night through to the morning of Friday September 27. “I woke up at 6am Friday morning when my phone sounded from an emergency alert”. As he lay in bed “listening to the wind whip around… I could hear things flying and hitting the house”. Then at 6.30am “I heard a large crash and the whole house shook violently, there was a large zap of electricity and the sound of broken glass as all my pictures came off the wall”. “My dog jumped about six feet in the air!”, he adds.
He recalls “I could hear water pouring in and found there was a puncture in the roof of my bedroom closet”. Surveying the house, he found another small hole in the ceiling of his office. As he was packing a go-bag, “the whole house shook again and the ceiling started falling”. Two trees in his back-yard had fallen over, striking the house.
“I panicked”, he says, “I grabbed my dog and we got in the truck that was parked in the garage”, the place he judged was safest in the house. “We waited in the car for about two hours and for the sun to come out”.
At 9am he went out to see the state of the neighborbood. “It looked like a warzone”, he says, “about one in five houses had a tree on it and there were dozens blocking the road”. Even as he was walking, “I heard a crack and watched as two trees fell straight on my neighbor’s house”. Fortunately his neighbours had used the same survival strategy, and were safely inside their truck in the carport.
As the rain died off, members of the community came out with chainsaws to cut through trees and clear the roads for emergency vehicles. “The trees in the upstate are not deeply rooted so all the rain makes the soil wet, then the strong wind blows them straight down”, Toby explains. He “personally cleaned up eight trees before returning to my house and cutting a path so that I could get my truck out of the driveway”.
This was the moment he finally reckoned with the damage to his home. “The tree had punctured the roof, breaking a lot of the supporting structure”. Rainwater had gotten in and soaked the ceiling “so it completely fell down pouring water and insulation all in the back of the house”. After securing a few more clothes and his computer, “it was time to save my Warhammer collection”.
“Almost my entire paint collection got crushed and water damaged”, he says, along with all his brushes. “I haven’t checked my airbrush but I’m hoping the compressor still works”, he adds.
A complement of Death Company were out on his painting desk – the picture above was taken the night before the storm really hit. “The tree knocked down a large piece of ceiling that fell directly onto my desk where they were placed”, smashing the models and scattering them so that the pieces were “lost to the warp”. However “the good news was Lemartes and Astorath were sitting inside the airbrush booth and therefore were saved” by the grace of the Emperor.
Most of his finished models were on one of two book shelves in the office. Many were thrown off when the tree hit the house, then drowned in a mire of rainwater and insulation material. Being a particularly spindly army, the AdMech “took on several casualties as a lot of the arms and spikes fell off”.
Toby’s Imperial Knights collection had been redeployed “on top of my other bookshelves in the corner of the room… the corner that saw the worst damage”. They were directly underneath the collapsing roof. The models were smashed in half, parts scattered into the flood water and insulation muck, and custom bases waterlogged.
Not everything was destroyed. “My Votann came out completely unscathed as I was planning on bringing them to my LGS the next day and they were sitting in a case in the living room”. “I definitely could have saved more of my models and salvaged more of my belongings”, Toby says, “But instead I spent the morning with neighbors clearing the roads – and I don’t regret my decisions”.
“I’m fortunate that I walked away with my life and that I’m mourning the loss of my models and hobby”, Toby says. “Others are sadly mourning the loved ones that they have lost”. But the loss of his models is deeply felt. He estimates he spent over 1000 hours building and painting miniatures, and “this collection held so many memories for me” of time spent with friends.
It will be a long time before things return to normal. It has taken weeks for power to be restored throughout South Carolina. The tree that hit Toby’s home was in place for a full week before a crane could remove it, and the building is still “deemed unliveable due to the mold and extensive structural damage”. “The inside of the house will need to be gutted”, he adds. He’s hopeful to be back home before Christmas.
“As far as Warhammer is concerned my main focus is on rebuilding my Blood Angels army”, Toby says. He has a place at the Grand Narrative event in Atlanta later this year. “A super kind person in my battle group just sent me a new Blood Angels army box”, he says, and he’s working on rebuilding the force already.
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Source: Wargamer
