The severe thunderstorms and several tornadoes that hit parts of Georgia over the weekend left uprooted trees, downed power lines, and damaged or destroyed power poles.
At this time, Georgia's electric cooperatives (EMCs) are reporting 16,000 customers without power, down from a peak of 45,000 last night. The heaviest damage appeared in southwest Georgia.
Strong winds caused a tremendous number of downed trees, flash flooding took down scores of power poles and washed out roads prevented crews from accessing some areas. Before work could begin, crews removed hundreds of tree and other debris from devastated areas.
However, EMCs have made great progress in their restoration efforts, and outage numbers continue to decrease following damage from the first and second waves of the storms.
Severely impacted EMCs have called upon cooperatives in other areas of the state which are on the way or on site to provide additional crews and equipment to continue restoration efforts throughout the day.
Georgia EMC is the statewide trade association representing the state's 41 EMCs, Oglethorpe Power Corp., Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp. Collectively, Georgia's customer-owned EMCs provide electricity and related services to 4.4 million people, nearly half of Georgia's population, across 73 percent of the state's land area.
