Georgia utility companies urge patience as headway made on power restoration

Georgia utility companies are slowly making headway with restoring power in the wake of Tropical Storm Irma.

Crews are still assessing damage as they bring back power after millions of Georgians were left without electricity.

Georgia Power’s number of customers without power has dipped from 870,000 at 4 a.m. Tuesday to 737,274 seven hours later, according to its outage map.

As of early this morning, Georgia Power reported about 43,000 homes and businesses were still without power in Macon-Bibb, which is down from a high of 55,000, county spokesman Chris Floore said.

Georgia Power says that it could days or even weeks for electricity to return to some areas of the state.

Also, the Georgia electric membership cooperative figures at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday show 78,810 outages in a region that includes Middle Georgia and extends west to Columbus.

Statewide there were about 410,000 members without power at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

GEMC is a trade association representing the state’s electric corporations.

In response to Irma’s damage, Georgia’s EMCs are bringing in more than 1,000 crews with extra trucks and equipment from 11 other states.

“For many EMCs, much of the day will be spent cutting into areas where damage has occurred and removing trees before repairs can be made to hundreds of broken poles and dozens of spans of downed wire,” GEMC said in a news release. “This storm and the resulting damage is an unprecedented outage event, and EMC representatives warn that in some cases outages will extend through the weekend.”

In Houston County, there were 7,347 customers without power as of 9 a.m. Tuesday. At the peak of Irma that number was about 22,000, said Jimmy Williams, director of the Houston County Emergency Management Agency.

“It’s getting better as the day progresses,” he said. “Just be patient. Don’t dial 911 unless you have a true emergency still. They cannot get Georgia Power or Flint Electric to you any quicker than anybody else can.”

Flint Energies is reporting 15,236 members still affected by outages at noon Tuesday. That’s, down from 16,544 members Tuesday morning.

Flint’s latest figures include Houston County with 5,306, Peach County with 1,650 and Crawford County with 2,285.

Telegraph writer Andrea Honaker contributed to this report.

This story was originally published September 12, 2017 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Georgia utility companies urge patience as headway made on power restoration."