Power restored to more than 600,000 in Georgia since Irma hit

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

Crews spent early Tuesday assessing damage as they worked to bring back power to hundreds of thousands of Georgians without electricity. By early Tuesday evening, the lights were back on for well over a half-million customers. Still, another 830,000 or so were waiting for electricity.

Georgia Power turned back on electricity for 405,000 households and businesses between early Tuesday morning and 6:30 p.m. Within a 24-hour period, the number of customers without power dipped from nearly 1 million to 545,000.

And in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia Power reported at 4 p.m. Tuesday that about 31,000 properties were still without power, down from a high of 55,000.

The numbers also dropped “considerably” Tuesday in Houston County, which was left with only a little more than 6,000 properties that did not have electricity by the early evening, Emergency Management Agency Director Jimmy Williams said.

There were about 22,000 Houston properties without power Monday.

Across Middle Georgia as the number of outages dwindled, utility companies asked people to remain patient.

Georgia Power said it could be days — or even weeks — for electricity to return to some areas of the state.

“While the company is working around the clock, customers should plan ahead for the potential for extended outages, possibly days or weeks, due to the vast damage from the storm,” the company said in a release.

Also, Georgia electric membership cooperative figures at 8 p.m. Tuesday showed 60,772 outages in a region that included Middle Georgia and extending to Columbus.

Statewide, there were about 286,000 electric co-op members without power late Tuesday afternoon, which reached a high of 550,000 Monday, according to the Georgia Electric Membership Corp., a trade association representing the state’s EMCs.

In response to Irma’s damage, Georgia’s EMCs brought in 4,000 workers from 13 other states to help with repairs. The company said in a statement it could take past the weekend before some people’s power is restored.

“EMCs stress that damage from Irma is a historic outage event in Georgia, and it will take days to completely replace or repair power lines and power poles in every corner of the state,” the statement said. “Unlike a summer thunderstorm which is short-lived and localized, Hurricane Irma battered entire EMC service territories for hours upon hours.”

Flint Energies had 13,982 members still affected by outages at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Flint’s latest figures included Houston County with 5,005, Peach County with 1,692 and Crawford County with 2,191.

This story was originally published September 12, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Power restored to more than 600,000 in Georgia since Irma hit."